This blog is inspired by a comment James from the Blog "Letters form the Sanitarium" made on my Recurring Dream post. He said, "Perhaps our "peak" is different than others".
Made me think of the Aldous Huxley book, "The Doors of Perception". If you haven't read it do. It is a great book. It is about his experiences with taking mescaline in the 60's.
His theory was that when people first developed we had the ability to sense everything in our world. To touch, taste, smell, feel, hear every single thing there was. It would have been overwhelming so we evolved into more specialized creatures. Our biology became pared down so we became only able to sense those things we needed to in order to survive. (i.e. sensing things like food, shelter, etc.)
He explained that in the beginning our "doors of perception" were wide open to everything. Evolution shut so they were only partially open. He believed that when he took mescaline his hallucinations, his perceptions, were simply the doors opening wider. He was not seeing things that were not there, but only things that his mind could not previously comprehend.
As soon as I read the book I thought...God, that is what it is like when I am really high in terms of my mood disorder (hypomanic like symptoms). I wake up and colours become so intense...It is like they glow. It is like there is an intense lifeforce running through everything. When I see a Van Gogh painting I know why he painted that way...He SAW things that way.
I started to think...hmmm maybe those of us with mental illnesses simply have our "doors" open wider than most. Maybe when I am depressed and paranoid...People really are trying to hurt me, or saying bad things about me? Maybe when I am high I really see things the way they are?
You never know...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
My doors are wide open. Hehe and all the beautiful colors of the spectrum flood in and swirl around me along with sparkling dust. Weeeeeee!!!!!!
Damn! Give me some of that! My doors have been slammed shut for a long time...I get tiny little periods of mild hypomania...at those times I am certain that everything in the world is sublime...intensified colours and sounds, ideas exploding like fireworks inside my head. I become so full of love and life...and then I suddenly slip into darkness.
Post a Comment