Divine inspiration
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008Gods and aliens are similar in several ways… they inhabit the space around our planet and they have a habit of appearing only to people who are out of their minds.
Fortunately for us humans, there are plenty of ways to get out of our minds.
Perhaps the least appealing would be a mental or physical illness… schizophrenia, epilepsy and head trauma. But as far as I know, you can’t easily make yourself schizophrenic or epileptic (though you may be able to induce it), and I really cannot recommend trying to give yourself any form of head trauma.
You could always make like the shamans. They used drugs to induce spiritual visions, particularly Salvia Divinorum, which is a bit like mint but has yet to make it in the chewing gum market.
That said, using drugs to gain visions could be considered as a less dramatic way of giving yourself head trauma.
But at least the shamans knew what they were doing. You have to feel sorry for the Oracle of Delphi.
It turns out that she might have been having drug induced visions without even realising it – studies have shown that geological processes and the fact that the temple was buried into the ground could lead to a naturally occuring chamber of ethylene.
Ethylene in low concentrations can cause a sense of euphoria… in higher concentrations however, it can cause ambigous rambling and memory disturbances – perfect material for spiritual visions.
Obviously, God is locked somewhere deep inside our brains… hard-wired perhaps and it seems that to actually see this deity you need to do some tinkering.
But that leaves the question of why religion in general tends to err on the side of temperance and abstinence. You would expect the opposite to be true and that we’d have pastors on acid and preachers on gas… and priests on alcohol.
And there my point eludes me once again.
Oh and here’s what the pedia’ says about Folie a deux.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I heard they used to burn pots of marijuana around the Oracle. But the history teacher I heard this from was occasionally full of crap, so it’s hard to say. Yours sounds more feasible.
I love the idea of a history teacher that specialises in fiction.
I’m not sure about the marijuana, though it wouldn’t surprise me, that lot were all about the party.
About alien abductions, I may have mentioned this before, but some scientists think sleep paralysis might be an explanation. It’s pretty weird, you wake up and can’t move and feel like someone’s sitting on your chest sometimes. If I hadn’t heard about it before it happened to me, I would’ve been freaked out.
Nice link… I had heard it mentioned before, but not in the context of aliens.
Sort of makes sense really.
Tell you what, that’s probably going to be the last time I use a fancy bit of French in my comics… it’s left this place like a ghost town today.
ville fantome.
No, it’s not the French! It was just a busy day yesterday.
C’est la vie.
I wish I knew how to say ‘busy day’ in French… and I wish I had the motivation to learn it too.
Journée chargée!
No need to actually learn…
I heard a pastor refer to his church’s money as "The Lord’s money." He kept it in insured certificates of deposits. I thought to myself, it it’s The Lord’s money, he should buy stocks with it instead. I mean, come on, The Lord! Talk about sure things!
You would also expect the lord’s money to require no insurance of any kind… I mean insuring anything to do with the church against an ‘act of god’ has to be a bit dodgy.
Yeah, I have had something like this.
I was also going thru crystal meth withdrawals and glandular fever, so I was hallucinating most of the time.
I ended up getting MRI’s, CT’s and x-rays.
During the "seizures" I would hear and almost see things, have very strong sensations of a presence moving near me.
I would be sure there was cold rotting corpse next to sometimes.
I’m extremely rational most of the time, I was aware that I was hallucinating, but I can see how it would be easy to mistake this experience for reality.
I would wake up and be barely able to move, like I was restrained, or be throwing my head around. Auditory hallucinations were normally of some one running in the hall or footsteps coming into my room. Visual hallucinations were fleeting and minor, barely percievable at most times. The sensations were the most impressive, very strong and realistic.
Wow, I did not know that… I’ve never had either (withdrawals or the fever) which is worse?
More to the point, Crystal Meth, I hear that can really mess people up… are you OK to talk about it a bit more? I mean, how did you start, how did you stop?
It’s completely cool if you don’t want to talk about it here though.
I’m fine talking about it.
I got started by swapping some weed for some meth with a random on a train ride into the city one night.
Drugs in general started at school tho.
Serious meth use started with parties and raves about 2 years after the first use.
From using at parties and raves, it became a 3 or 4 times a week thing.
Pretty heavy use for a while.
I quit pretty much because I got bored.
Quitting initially was just a matter of not being around the other ppl I used with.
It took along time for the cold turkey symptons to set in.
Still get desire to hook up every now and again. I miss the rush and the lifestyle, but not the expense, come downs and lifestyle.
The song "Passener" by the Deftones ft. Maynard pretty uch sums up how I feel about meth.
I don’t mind you asking any questions, I have no shame about my problems.
Glandular was far more painful and debilitating then using meth or the withdrawals.
Keep in mind, I quit smoking easily.
oddly enough, ben, we’ve never really discussed this in much detail
True.
I dunno how I feel about that.
Wow, and thanks… I must admit that my knowledge of those sort of things isn’t that good.
… but I do hear that like most addictions it’s a case of getting out of the situation – that is to stop hanging around with other users and stop going to the places where you used.
Seriously, thanks for being able to talk about this – it’s good to hear from someone that’s been through it and got out the otherside, as opposed to being fed information by the media, which is sometimes nothing more than speculation.
It is cool.
It is just something I have done.
The media beats it up a lot, making old folk anxious sells papers.
The whole issue of drugs and how I feel about them confuses me, so expect polarised and contradicting opinions.
Feel free to ask more questions when you have them.
When I was 12, I was over at a friend’s house. I complained of a splitting headache (never had had one) and went home. My dad looked some things up in his medical concordance. He called the pediatrician and said, “I think my son has meningitis!” Of course the pediatrician laughed at him. The headache persisted through the night. At 7am, running a fever of 103, my parents rushed me to the emergency room. By 8 my fever was 104. I was thrashing, sweating, and delirious. To this day, I swear a good friend of the family from another city was in the foyer of the hospital when I arrived. Of course she was 200 miles or more away at the time, but I asked my folks a few days later (I had the viral, wait it out with ice packs on your head kind of meningitis) why had Becky been there when I arrived? They all looked at me like I was crazy. But I would have SWORN she had been there, I heard her, saw her, everything. I can tell you in exacting detail what the foyer of that hospital looked like, I can tell you how many nurses there were. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that someone was there who was not there!