a Relief for Us All

I find few experiences in my life as interesting as the panic attacks and nervous breakdowns I've had, both recently and in my teens. If we use the word "spiritual" in an extended way - not necessarily supernatural, but instead anything deep, profound or enigmatic(as opposed to things apparent, intellectual or conceptual) - then they were truly spiritual experiences. Bad spirits they may have been, but still. Shamans and spiritualists across the world view these kind of mental conditions as demonic in nature. It certainly is a great metaphor. The panic attacks are transcendental experiences creating long lasting tensions of anxiety. The attack itself happens and last for a duration of anything from minutes to hours, but they often also bring with them continued suffering of painful tensions for weeks, months, years afterwards. They seem completely unnecessary, one becomes scared without any apparent reason to be scared. It is, as if, possessed.

If this is true, if we all have the potential for becoming completely struck by fear to an extent that we cannot control our thoughts or actions at all as if we were possessed, then there must be an opposite, there must be a mental condition of pure bliss like the ones also described by shamans and mystics across the entire world. They might call it by different names - nominous, grace, salvation, unio mystica, wu wei, satori - but there must be an actual mental condition of bliss that occurs first as a transcendental experience and then as a lasting lifted spirit, or enlightenment.

Fear is generated by anger, and anger generated by fear. If you're afraid then it will feel good to become angry, it will be a relief. Hence scared people seek refuge in angry music, violent movies etc. But being angry tells the unconscious that there is a treat to their being, hence anger will create more fear. Hatred and anger creates an dis-identification making it seem okay to harm or hurt the other(the treat). It is very essential to our being, when we were apes it was of the utmost importance that we could protect ourselves from treats outside of the group. We needed to identify with our group or family - our loved ones - and be fearful and prejudicial about whatever might be outside of our group. Today we see this kind of ape-like behavior in humans who support certain sport teams, people who claim to belong to certain religious groups, people who listen to certain types of music or is in certain social groups(goths, punks, nazis, gangsters), and so on. We've extended our identification to something beyond our family and our nearest, but it's still a pretty basic and ape-like group mentality.

So just like fear is linked to hatred and anger, so too must bliss be linked to some of the most primordial of feelings. This is obviously the feeling of love, but also the feeling of non-self.

All of the mystics are clinging to this concept of no-self. Even though it doesn't make sense; one has to have a self to have a concept of no-self, one has to have a self to have an experience at all, so the non-self experience is surely something impossible. So the religious and philosophical treatises of the mystics fall short of logic. But we should not neglect their accounts of this state and experience just because they are not able to describe it in a logical way. It might not be actual enlightenment, but there is a mental condition similar to angst revolving around the feeling of pure bliss.

It is the basis of all religions, and yet it has never been investigated properly by any modern science. Neither neurology nor psychology. Just like the religious have misunderstood this state for centuries, so too does now the modern man mistake it. The ones who search for it are still mystics and psychonauts, outcasts of our society.

Even though they are just searching for a relief for us all.