may i commend you on your original thinking, and connection of ideas. whenever i do something like that i am told that i'm posting delusional nonsense. i am a computer security specialist, i've been to some amazing advanced classes, and even you'd be surprised at what ELSE they can do.

anyway, though i read your post with credulity, i am not alarmed. here's my take, (being a 41 yr old schizotypal psersonality, who thinks of this stuff all the time but doesn't take meds and so has to figure out a way of coping), is that as a shaman, (an sz patient who can totally control his 'demons') i worry that i will eventually be ambushed and killed, as are all shamans, because mankind doesn't trust them. so i set up a system where i can't be ambushed. i have coopted all the powerful demons around me. stole some from peers. taught them to work for me. installed them as sentries. they surround me. try and ambush me with a rocket launcher, it blows up in the governemnts face. try and blast me with microwaves, well, i just move on. microwaves from the oven with the door off can't get up and chase a mobile nomadic spirit, meanwhile there may be invisible forces much more powerful than 'microwaves' working for me. they are demons, not a wave, not a particle, but a 'principle', invincible and inconditionate. microprinciples vs micro'waves'. good luck.
-onderdonk

dude.. that's funky. Still I'm not sure about the micro principles vs micro waves. I think that micro waves can wave them out. Cos they are waving you know what I mean?

In response to Raven's post, I would like to say that I believe that psychological factors far outweigh physiological ones in making us sick. By this I mean that for example, far more harmful than microwave signals are the contradictions of modern media. The TV is a mind scrambler and contributes to a lack of awareness of attention, lack of focus. Public TV especially, and other stations relying heavily upon commercials are a commercial medium - the commercial is the message, the program is the commercial. The poor are the foremost target: lacking the funds for other, higher-quality (and healthier) entertainment, they will stick to the TV. In addition to scrambling the mind, the TV induces a somnambulic state, where we take in without judging or sifting through the information before we accept it. The masses assimilate the propaganda without even knowing it.

This is just an example. Today's world at large favours "schizophrenic" thinking, and postmodernism, brought upon us by the "scrambling" effect of the media, is how this thinking is expressed in the Western community at large. In today's intellectual and artistic world it is "cool" to be like the TV - a jumble of stuff.

Already in the early 20th century schizophrenics often reported that they are controlled by machines, are listened to with the help of machines, tortured by machines, or that machines transmit their (or someone elses') thoughts or volitions (see an interesting article a few years ago in the very interesting quarterly "The Cabinet"). Technology contributes to their paranoia and psychosis. By controlling the world, the machines have made an entering into our brains (or minds, if you prefer).

i agree, as does the unibomber, that technology is bad. i teach computer class, but i agree with thoedore kazinsky. i teach how to perform in the circus, but i don't recommend it - i am the tiger with 'irrational centrifugality', who escapes from the circus 'for no reason'.

tv, a jumble. but if using metacognition to explain alternate meanings to yourself, the commercial is no longer the message, your psychosis is.

jumble? i prefer phantasmagoria. hegel was great at it. late 1700's. way more of a 'jumble' than your simplistic 21st century media. and it was good stuff. to make us strong. a strong system could hold within itself many contradictions, like a strong country can hold within itself many opposing views.

as a male age 41, i am at danger of losing my sz from natural causes. in order to keep the symptoms, thereby keeping the access to the demon world, i pursue isolation, stress, and overheating of the language center of the brain. typing like this helps, even. typing phantasmagoria is even better. reading 5 disparate topics a day and interconnecting them, the veins of the leaves anastimosing in various ways so as to form a reticulated plexus of veins of unequal size.

so i read the paper. i watch the network tv ( cable really IS bad, 'cause it costs money), and i take in as many opposiing views as possible, and try to believe EVERYTHING. so it will create a psychosis in me. and that's the real entertainment.

-onderdonk

What's the advantage of being connected to the "demon world" in your head, onderdonk?

good question. i assume it as obvious, but would only be so to a 2 year old, or an animal, not the humans who think it's good to be like the humans. i think hat before age two, we all have access to it. and to put it simply, the answer is: infinite knowledge. all my life, when i can't figure something out, or scienc e tells me there's a mystery, i go to the demon world for the answer. it doesn't mean the answer is "true", but it has to be plausible and acceptable to my open and maleable mind. often it is qquite satisfying, and often positively exciting. and that's why i call it psychosis, 'cause its a whole set of interconnected ideas that make great sense to me but to almost no one else, and most others reject even listening or entertaining the topic, usually based on lack of energy. but i have access to infinite energy too, so why would i backk out of investigating all realities, all philosophies, all religions, and all demon world presentations? maybe others are busy in the human world, but i got that world locked down. top of my field. number one citrix instructor in the world. business is booming. i work a week or two a month. and i'm bored. so i work on advanced projects far outside the scope of modern science, with the demons. i put together recently an essay on the uses of madness, or "the demon world", and i came up with several. also, i have an essay on integration of consensual reality with the unseen. if i paste these two, maybe you will understand better my interest. i see no negative conotation to the demon world for myself, as i am not afraid, and can control the demons if i make the efort. i am in no danger, yet have access to demon counsel. here's a sound bite of an anser: if demons control most humans, but i don't let 'em control me, then i control them, therefor i control all humans. an end run toward world domination.

-onderdonk

i'm sz, but i can hold it in. And that's the trick. and how hard is it? it takes energy. alot of energy. that's what's behind the power breakfast, and the 50 dollars a day worth of 7000 calorie intake, this is one huge circus i run. and i've always said that i could be 'caught' at my insanity, if only society had the resources to follow me around twenty four hours a day. Because I can't maintain the wall of 'sane' around my 'insanity' up 24 hours a day. it's unnatural. I've had the situation all my life. yes, visual and auditory hallucinations, much more on the mechanics of that coming up, but i recently saw 1408 the movie, and room 1408 is my situation. only i can leave and go back in anytime i want. but it's exactly that crazy in there. the guy has to deal with it. michael eslin the writer;and so he take s a bit of the tack that i have learned to take. i command the spirits before me, overcome them with my will. it's the only way. i would describe how i learned this as 'shamanism training', and i think it's a shame that people in this situation without shamanism training are termed sz in this soceity, and drugged into submission. i would also venture a theory that this 'madness' in room 1408, the sz, the demon world, the hallucinations, the collective unconscious even maybe, this madness learns to groom itself into the human world through parental guidance in the early years. i see a mom take the 4 year old in the temper tantrum on the bus, hold the kids head steady, look straight into the kids eyes, and say firmly 'you will STOP that'. that's how most people cut off the demon world from the human world, i think. like when i see the parent of the 18 year old say 'you do your best to raise them, you try to teach them right from wrong, and then look what they go out and do', again i think this is the dialog between reason and madness, between human and demon world.

this culture leaves that stuff as 'just dreams', 'leave it in the night where it belongs.' other cultures grab the dreamer and make him explain it to the community, and if the dreamer is good enough he is the shaman. the magical assistance of the tribe, interacting with the unseen forces. whether they be modern physics 'higgs field', or sprites and goblins, we could always use some help with the more-than-meets-the-eye.

i grew up in this culture. dreams from the outset. the demon world. not till 18 years old was i set free in the libraries of america, in the college and universities, in the New York City 'stacks' beneath Bryant Park, in the book stores of america, and even a little bit on this 'internet', did i discover the hallucinogenic cultures of the world, and their alternate understandings of reality. and i developed 'apperception', the ability to believe in more than one valid way of looking at the world. i have a theory that people who graduate collee loose the capacity for apperception, which has to be developed before about the age of 21, and i saw what college was doing - giving you more to read than you can handle, so you can't cover any other material, and then telling you how to interpret what you read. i dropped right out and retreated to the library, apperceptive capacity intact.

and i looked to the mysteries of modern science to develop my own alternate and equally valid way of looking at the world, thereby becomming a world visionary leader, as i always assumed i was, having been born to a roman catholic priest and a catholic nun who had run away from her home in mexico, where she lived with her mytical aztec sorceress grandmother. i tell people i walk around in a non-ordinary universe model. i have articles that i have integrated together so that i can explain away gravity. in my 'world', the earth pushes up, not pulls down, and that's another whole essay i already have somewhere.

i have a theory, it's only a theory, of how this works. i have a right brain and left brain. colin wilson in the sixties wrote a book, 'the bicameral critic', about experiments using one brain or the other. breathing in through one nostril to activate the opposite brain. i did an experiment later in life from a guy in an article who said to drop cold water in each ear, one by one, to notice the different mood, activating that particular hemisphere. what i discovered that aternoon walking backk up the hill frm the diner to the computer admin job i had (which i was later kicked out of, lead away by the fbi, thinking i was a terrorist. it usually ends that way. can't keep the craziness locked up forever. never actually hurt anybody though, just manipulate their minds about the risk of having me around), and here's what i learned about my bicameral mind:

i think the emotional right brain suffered severe trauma - ask me about my crazy mother while i was growing up, who practically ensured sz later in life - and i came up, under intense stress, with the survival tactic sometimes taken, where the left brain is comandeered to grow a new imitation replacement right brain. i can't do math. i mean i took calc I in college, but now i can't do math, don't know how much money i have, just vaguely kow how long i can go for till i need to work, i refuse to compare the values of two numbers. it makes me depressed. to calculate with my mathematical left brain is to leave the right brain, 2 year old stunted emotional personality in place. dangerous, too, 'cause the left brain, when it's not doing math, is the wall of energy over the two year old emotional mind. and it's the artificial personality talking to you here and now. got good at this around 21 years old, in college dorms. started working on it in 1st grade. miserable at it till atleast mid way through high school. at 41, i'm a star, at the top of my field, at managing my class and doing a dynamic presenation. i'm a citrix politician, 'cause i've just learned all the right things to say to make the students love me. i have the top evals in the country. and i stopped gettiing the rave revviews the few months i was on seroquel, so they are responding to the sz. the high, manic energy level. the entertainment of madness. (though i act like a sane computer manager or something, till after evals on te last day, maybe.) one time someone said he thought i was either gay or crazy, from the animated personality. this disturbed me a little, i wonder how many people assume i'm gay, 'cause i'm not, but i guess whatever. but that's why i think it shows no matter what. i used to think i could convince anyone that i am sane or insane, depending on what i choose. i can't really. insane, sure. but for sanity, the best i get from the pdoc is 'schizotypal personality disorder' and a recommendation for antipsychotics or ssri's.

i know that i don't deal well with stress. when my survival is threaned, or, worse, when a conflict bagins to brew over anything, i jump into 'mind-to-mind conflict' mode, which is very sz, and there is no beating me, i'll gradually escalate to the point where everybody dies and all is destroyed, unless the opponent takes an opportunity offered to step back. so that's the worst side of the sz. no, i know, it's my delusions of power.

the hallucinations, both visual and auditory, all my life, have always been clearly distinguishable from consensual reality. the demons are made of a different essence, give off a brighter light, i've never had trouble knowing the difference, sometimes the halluciantion is vivid but more often, unless i am shamanic journeying or dreaming, the hallucianation is more fleeting and part of the imagination realm. auditory i have to go looking for. when bored, on a bus, i get outside my body , go out on top of the bus, maybe talk to a tree or go inside the mountain and look for demons to talk to. and the stuff i get is always in metaphor format, with lots of stuff to 'pull out' over the course of the next 24 hours, preferable mediating on a mountain hike.

for instance, a few weeks ago, i was researching madness, and i went to do a shamanic journey to get more information, i had gotten bogged down and confused, with 'what is the benefit of madness, i know there must be SOMETHING'. I went in and got, the typical metaphors. vision, then audio in caps.

A mind becomes objective to itself: the castle is like a grand central train station, trains going out in every direction, above ground, (and coming back, from every direction, below ground); Beneath the white castle, four black stakes penetrate deep into the earth, and a single red light like Rudolph’s red nose is placed at the top of a central tower, where a central figure – a homunculus that feels like the force of will itself – can look out on the surrounding hills, valleys, and towns, like a panopticon of the soul. The central figure pulls a book from the library in the tower, and as he reads, the pages are produced dynamically, from the steam rising up out of the black pipes below. The book he is reading is called “MADNESS RISING”;

“PRIVATE GIGGLES IN A POSTCARD TO YOU: OUT OF A GOLDEN LAKE, MOLTEN LAVA RISES UP LIKE A TADPOLE THAT CATCHES THE ECSTATIC DRUMBEAT OF TIME AND LEARNS TO RIDE THE AIR; HOPE AND PROMISE TWINKLE AS ICICLES AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX TADPOLE CAN NEVER QUITE MASTER, MYSTERY AND WONDER FLYING ABOVE THE SURFACE OF THE LAKE AGAIN AND AGAIN.”

took a day in the mountains to break it down:

It was the answer to "where does madness fit in to the scheme of things." the mind became illuminated to itself, instead of just being a big black box, "it's all in your mind" was never a helpful comment. now the mind can be analyzed as a vision. the mind was a big castle, connected to the body though deep pipes that allow steam to rise up - like the 18th century ideas of "humours" and "vapors" of the body that affect the mind. And a homunculus - a tiny man in charge of orchestrating everything - is in the central tower, looking out on the hills and lakes and villages of the soul.
And as turbulent wind affects the environment, the homunculus/will is in charge of orchestrating everything back to the best possible scenario.

There's a huge "heat gradient" across this landscape that this will looks out upon: the higher regions, corresponding to the height of the castle tower, are cold. icicles hang. hope and promise. i could add the material world, comfort, companionship, etc. this is available only in the upper, colder reaches.

Mankind at this point in its development has risen out of the lower,, hot, molten, alchemical (molten gold lake), and has reached the frigid heights. Continuous landscape that it is, the upper reaches are constantly threatened to be overcome by the hot below (the lake of "madness"); so the cold upper reaches have tried to close the door, stop talking to unreason, confine it in the sanitarium, drug it with SSRI's, but keep it from melting our icicles of "hope and promise".

But the homunculus itself is the evolution of the tadpole-from-the-depths, that's not only the source, where it came from, but it's what will sooner or later be needed to rise up again, when there's a crisis, when the red light on the top of the castle comes on. that's when the homunculus will have to raise up more "mystery and wonder", when there's no more "hope and promise" to cling to.

I am the homunculus. I lead my own soul, in and out of madness. I flood the upper reaches with storms of molten gold. I let them drip off and dry and freeze, for a little while, see what kind of butterfly emerges from the cocoon, but I am a wildly experimental homunculus, and I get bored with my cold and frail little butterflies of "proper behavior in the physical moral human social world", and I choose to raise up continuous streams of phantasms, out of the molten gold lake of madness.

Did I find my way out? I gained and understanding of madness from the madness itself; I will continue to inhabit and guide my own soul-landscape, and mine will be full of the molten tadpoles turning to fiery dragons, the dragons of "mystery and wonder".

So i have these ideas racing through my head, along with the ideas in the email to my exwife this morning, about 'balance' and 'polarity' and 'all-or-nothing', and this is the break between my class sessions. it's lunch now, and lunch break is almost over. one more thing to say, about 'bracketing'.....

the year after i dropped out of college, 20 years ago, i went to the lower level of a library in the bronx. i read a book about existentialism, and then a book by the philosopher Hume. Hume had a huge influence on me by telling me one simple thing, at that critical time when i was about to go into all the libraries and read everything about world religions and spirituality. he said that we are allowed to do 'bracketing'. most people have the mindset that they grew up with, and look at other things only through the lens of their own beliefs, out of a fear of losing themselves in something foreign, and out of the mistaken impression that they have only one mind. Hume proposed 'bracketing' your own beliefs - completely setting them aside - only temporarily, there's nothing wrong with this, then totally believing EVERYTHING in the new mindset of another completely different culture, 'cause only then will you be able to judge the worth of that mindset. and that's how apperception is developed.

so bracketing is what i've learned to do, always. i come to work with my wierd beliefs, like the god of my own religion. delusions of grandeur, and power. hard to contain. i bracket it and play the citrix guy in class. then at break, go back to my crazy self and write this email, (now 2:45 pm and the last break of the afternoon. see how this is the fun part of my day, the rest is what i get paid to do?)

delusions of power are the hardest part to keep contained. in any conflict i fly into the rage of a god. it's a mistake, but frequently made.


how do i 'hold it in', and what about the hallucinations - auditory and visual, how do you tell the difference? all about the integration of madness and reality. as i was watching law and order last night, the district attourney made the comment to the defense attourney: 'so you turn the courtroom into alice in wonderland?!?' because she wanted to discuss the possibility that her client believed a 'god' would 'strike down a soul', and this was psychotic, in the context of the story. the point is the atitude of humanity toward 'alice in wonderland'. hard to integrate these two mindsets, these two worlds.

another book way back around when i read hume, was carlos casteneda. i remember reading several books in order from him, but as with many authors, it was the first that made the lasting impression. i have told people to start with that as apprentice to shamanism. here is the critical scene: carlos goes into the mexican wilderness, and discovers don juan, a yaqi shaman, who shows carlos his magic powers and gradually makes carlos the shaman apprentice. carlos had to beg to be taught the magic. the first thing don juan said to carlos when he agreed to teach him was - carlos, you will go to the top of this cliff, and stand there as long as you need to, before you jump off. if you have the slightest doubt, you will die at the bottom of the ravine.but if you fiure it out, if you get it right, you will just bounce when you get to the bottom. with this bounce you will arive back at the top, and THEN we can get started with your training.

it's like a zen koan. mentally digest THAT story. get to the point where you're ready to become a shaman. the mental processing of that koan has to do with learning how to integrate two realities into eachother. our american culture doesn't understand, and calls this sz. but the mexican pre-columbian culture mapped the hallucinogenic worlds. aztec, taoist, russian irrationalism, etc. but not our culture. but they gave us the libraries! (i used to say, if you don't want other people to turn out like me, and as leader of this country i wouldn't, then you should call out the F-16's and bomb the libraries to rubble. and the barnes and noble and borders. and hack amazon.com off the internet. burn the books. leave only consensual reality, and burn the 'witches' at the stake. but it's too late now.)

problem with me is i have so much energy inside. i find sanity is an energy management issue, and i try hard, with lots of exersize, reading, and hard work, but sometimes it gets away from me. In the stressful situations that threaten my survival, the energy to maintain the insulating firewall between the right and left brain degrades. at some point i give up the effort, and it's not like i 'can't stop, but it's more like i stopped trying. and i let out the 'demons'. that's what people call 'acting out'. it's battle mode. mind-to-mind combat. i have a powerful arsenal, and unfortunatly, a whole section of the frontal lobes devoted to warfare. it activates in confrontational situations. acting out doesn't always have to happen, but the ideation is almost inevitable. and usually i just scare people by presenting the ideation, and that's enough, though since i always pull all the punches, eventually i loose credibility.

rush used to have a line in a song: "if i could only reach that dial inside, and turn it up", well, i went in search of the dial, ound it, and turned it ALL THE WAY up.
i got the energy in me through extreme magical discoveries: red shift space kenosis. i eat the chi at the center of large astrophysical objects; people look at the sun and consider if it's up or down. astronomers look at the sunspots, and contemplate the surface of the sun. astrophysists, like the lead guitarist from Queen, describe the inner lobes of the sun and the convection of gasses, and the astration of metals at the center. taoists travel to the center of the sun and sit down with the king and queen of the sun, and drink it's luminescense in tea. so looking at the largest astrophysical dark pools of black holes at the center of HLIRGs - hyper luminous infra red galaxies - a taoist can get access to alot of chi in 21st century astrophysics. there's alot more to this that led to my potency against time. whole other story.

these hallucinations, both auditory and visual, though i can acheive them in waking reality, do not usually appear there. i do alot of dreaming. used to practice dream yoga, way too powerful magic for me, but i saw all the dreams i ever had all together as cells in a jail, and how they all worked together and made sense. i have been lucid dreaming since age 5. and there is a remarkable consistency in the dream world of the special dreams of the year, and the shamanic jouneying that i learned in my late tweties, that i am good at, where i use a drum tape and travel for 20 minutes to other dimensions where i work with the demons.

But I used to have a permanent demon head in a second field of vision above my regular field of vision. a professional shaman removed it with instant surgery through her eyeball to mine. another story.

i have two modes of 'being' in public, i guess. the main one only 'sees' what most people see, consensual reality, no auditory or visual hallucinations. and theis is actually the easier, more natural mode for me, except in periods of extreme stress (even physical stress - shovel snow for 5 hours, lie down and look up, and ride the lightning across the cloud tops in visual and auditory hallucinations). but in order to act like a normal, high-performance human being, technical instructor, i see only what they see. But. I have a recorder on. it records the 'other' stuff'. for me to go see that stuff live, i can 'turn it on' and look, but then i am kind of comatose, can't really interact or look sharp. so i usually just record it in public, then go home to my private room, lie down, and either in the drum tape or as i am starting to go to sleep, replay the day but looking at all the extra. who had demons around them. even who else was a powerful shaman.

-onderdonk

There is so much garbage in here that I don't even fee like commenting on any of it, so if you want to believe such things fine, but please stop posting here before I have you locked from the forums. I'm getting really sick of this crap.

just being honest, just trying to explain the answer to a complicated question. i know i'm free to believe anything i want, living in san francisco, usa. freedom of thought, atleast in the big coastal cities.

not sure how i offended you, go ahead and lock me out then, they say you have to watch out for the quiet ones, well, here i go, watch out!

-onderdonk

I understand, and I'm not offended in the slightest, but this is a health forum, not a forum to discuss demons, possession, technological paranoia, and so forth. People come on here for help, to hear other's stories on how to get better and seek opinions on treatments. This area of the site is frequented by people with various theories on spirits and so forth and I'm getting sick of it. Keep that posting on a new age forum somewhere else, but not here. Post only if you have something to say about disease, health, medicine and other such issues.