(October 13, 2014 at 9:07 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: The hardest thing for me is that I'm schizophrenic and I've had a lot of mystical experiences which I know is only a product of my mind. Yet in this insanity, I felt I did see potential beauty, glory, and greatness but that these were archetypes that exist in me and is both imaginative but has some basis to reality. I don't know. I feel like I know spirituality can have high levels, intense levels of devotion to God can lead to high stages, I feel like I witnessed some of these high stages even though I was going through psychosis. I feel like I witnessed what it means to be holy.
At the same time, since I'm schizophrenic, I question all my beliefs to the supernatural. I feel like I have a soul but how do I know this isn't delusional? I feel there is stages of closeness to God but how do I know this is not delusional.
Well that's the thing, isn't it?
How would you go about figuring out whether you are having an actual experience with a god, or misinterpreting what is going on in your mind?
There is a man here in LA that is an atheist (studied by UCLA neuroscientist Ramachandran), who also has temporal lobe epilepsy. During and after his seizures, he has a mystical experience where he believes he is communicating with a god. This last for a day or two.
When it is over, he understands exactly what caused his experience, and as incredible his experiences are, he remains an atheist. His epilepsy is controllable by medication, but he refuses to take them.
If this man lived, lets say in 610 CE and went into a cave and had a temporal lobe seizure, he might have hallucinated that he received direct communication from the creator of the universe.
Quote:At the same time, if we do have souls and God did in grain us with spiritual knowledge, I would be hasty in just giving it up saying I don't know absolutely or based on evidence therefore should do away with these feelings. Or giving them up simply because I have a mental illness.
'Spiritual knowledge' sounds like a incoherent phrase to me.
The feelings you are having are real. Connecting them to a god is just not justified.
Quote:I don't want hold beliefs that are delusions and not based on knowledge but I don't want to give up on spiritual knowledge if God gave that to me.
How can you tell the difference between an experience occurring in your mind that you are misinterpreting as 'spiritual knowledge' and actual 'spiritual knowledge'?
Quote:That put's me between a rock and a hard place it feels.
No, it puts you in the position of basing your beliefs on a feeling, which is known as a poor path to the truth, or basing them on demonstrable evidence and reasoned argument, which has given us just about everything in our lives.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
