Human Spiritual Structure: Miscellaneous
Notes in progress © 1998-2002 Alan McAllister  


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Happiness

When the mental vibrations of a being are matched by objects around it, it finds happiness. Ultimate, unlimited, happiness is found only in the infinite bliss of Brahma. But if we have junk in our space, unfinished samskaras perhaps we cannot fully resonate with the infinite.

Internal vrs External Change

The correspondence of inner and outer. Most of us are focused on the perfection (or at least the improvement) of our external environment. This includes our family, job, house, friends, etc. When these improve we believe that we will be happier, i.e. that our internal environment will also improve. However this is not the way it works. Since the internal is really causal, and the external a reflection of the images ( samskaras) we have inside, it will not change radically until the internal changes. This is a problem for most people, they don't really want to change first. But when your internal pictures have changed then the external environment can also change, just as the picture on the screen changes when the slide in the projector is changed.

IQ and Cancer

There is an apparent inverse relationship between mental ability and incidence of cancer. This has given rise to the theory that cancers are the body's answer to mental boredom. [HB]

Multiple Personalities

There are people who exhibit several personalities in the same body. These may have different names, mutually exclusive memories, quite different personalities, and even different physical traits, including allergies etc. These cases are an interesting challenge for any theory of the mind and spirit.

Psychologists might suggest that these are people with deep trauma or other experiences that are so repressed that they are projected onto an alternate self, or that an alternate self arose so as to avoid having to deal with them.

Rosenfield suggests that it is not that there are separate sets of memories, but rather different memory processes. That somehow the brain has lost some of its normal flexibility in adjusting dynamically to changing experience. That in most people there are a wide range of "personalities", but in the multiple personality cases these have narrowed to a few less flexible ones. In this he sees parallels to brain damaged persons. In other cases one personality may remember everything, while the other only recalls experiences that it was "awake" for. In many cases one personality is energetic, fearless, and may have various degrees of reduced sense of touch or pain, while the other is dull, gloomy, and often in pain. As if the positive and negative aspects of the self have split apart.[SFF]

Some cases indicate that the "up" personality had lost its body image, i.e. loss of sensation and pain, loss of sense of time, a reduction of the self to that of long-term abstraction. The root of this loss is with deep trauma or other experiences that completely absorb the sense of self-reference, but are too painful to integrate, resulting in the rejection of self-reference altogether. As if the self becomes stuck, or lost, in the pain, and is left behind there by a new painless self. [SFF]

Memories are not repressed, but the brain limits its range of organization, perhaps by blocking access to certain blocks of neurons. The result is a general loss of certain functions (e.g. the ability to understand colors) rather than the loss of specific memories. Having fixed certain the brain's response to certain types of stimuli, this limits the dynamic range of the person's consciousness, and may lead to neurotic behavior, or multiple personalities. In the physical body extreme pain may lead to the blocking of all sensation from a limb, but only at the cost of a "hole" in the body-image. [SFF] On an intermediate level, compare to the alteration of breathing in the physical body, which helps to keeps certain emotions etc. out of conscious awareness. [AHM]

See also cases of amnesia, in particular where the personality changes significantly at the same time. In some cases persons who do not consciously recognize family etc. may exhibit changes in body fields that suggest that at some level they still do. [SFF]

Tourette's Syndrome

This is a "disease" in which people suffer from various compulsions, and impulsions. The most noticeable are "tics", actions or words (sounds) that involuntarily are repeated over and over. These compulsions often arise from the cruder areas of the brain, and the normal inhibitive mechanisms appear to be lacking. Chemically is is associated with an imbalance in the neurotransmitter dopamine. Person's with this syndrome (roughly 1 out of 1000) may be said to be possessed. [AM]

Some of the main characteristics may include: the frequent touching of nearby objects, a setting of and testing of boundaries. This may involve the feet as well as the hands. The imitation of actions and sounds, which may evolve into "tics", echos in the brain that keep popping up. While the tendency to tic is innate, the form of the tics is learned and personal. It may be the sound of a word as much as the meaning that leads to its use as a tic, the context is generally forgotten. Unusual things are often seized on. There can be a compulsiveness about symmetry and organization, of ones relationship to objects physically, including a steering wheel, or the words on a page. There may be problems with sudden violent emotions, and with urges to thrown things. One may also be overtaken by obsessive thoughts, or worries, which if suppressed, or simply un-acted on may give rise to verbal tics. There can also be number compulsions, to do things a certain number of times. [AM]

When the rage comes, the self splits into two, one part watching and another part caught up in the emotion. It can be suppressed in public, but only with great effort. But there can also be a playful child-like side that is witty and amusing. [AM]

In the case study, any smooth, focused, rhythmic, action will hold the person's attention and the various tics etc. will not surface. But when the flow is broken, then they begin to emerge, in a random, chaotic way. When in a rhythmic activity (like riding an exercise bike) the usual need for symmetry etc. may not appear. The height of this is the surgeon in the operating room, who, as long as his concentration is not interrupted, can work exactly and smoothly for hours at a stretch, almost as if he is a different person. This is true of others, in regard to music or sports. They are extremely accurate and fast at many motor tasks, while the disorder can appear if they consciously slow to normal speeds. This may be due to accessing a different layer of the mind, that which coordinates physical action, the routine long practiced. [AM]

It is almost as if the breaks give a space for the chaos to surface. When there is the focus, the rhythm it holds the self together, as with amnesiacs and music. Many of the traits seem to be exaggerated, or uncontrollable versions of things that other people may suffer from only occasionally, or when overcome by emotion or drink? [AHM]

Black Madonna

The experiences and material that Galland presents about the Maddona, in particular various "black" Maddonas shows the complex melding and blending of many of the main pre-Christian goddesses, even some in the new world.[LD] It suggests that the specific links and relationships are not important, and in practice may be far to complex to ever sort out. What is important is the qualities that these figures have had, and what they represent to their devotees. This deep aspect of the feminine in the world and in each of us that is partially objectified in the myths, icons, and statues of these Goddesses is what is of importance. They form a gateway to this aspect of ourselves, one which has often been repressed or keep out of sight. That this is so is indicated by the nearly universal (include Tara and Kali) existence of these figures throughout human cultural history. While the form of the gateway has significance, it is way lies behind the gate, what lies in the mirror of our souls that is the goal. [AHM]

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Created March, 1998.
Last updated January 1, 1999.
© Alan McAllister

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