And now for something completely different. Long post.

[Tobin S.]

This happened about a year ago during Thanksgiving.

If I recall correctly, in Dante’s Inferno the deepest depths of hell are frozen solid and absolutely devoid of all warmth.

It had been 15 years since I had entered the hospital due to psychic distress. I thought I had made so many improvements in my life that I might not need the meds anymore, so I tapered off of them over the period of a couple of months and everything was alright for about three months after that. I felt different, more energized and more aware, but I didn’t really feel bad until I suppose the energy and maybe a consistent lack of sleep overloaded my psyche. I entered the hospital this past Thanksgiving Day because I thought everyone wanted to kill me. It would prove to be one of the most transforming experiences of my life- probably the most important thing to happen to me to this point.

They put me in observation. There I was supposed to stay for about 24 hours. They said that they would reintroduce the meds I was taking and then, after a day, would determine if I needed further hospitalization. They called the observation area the Triple A Assessment area, and I thought I had fallen into the hands of the CIA. I was an asset to be used for some purpose beyond his conscious control, at some point, whose conditioning had prematurely started to break down. I guessed I needed a little tune up.

The assessment area had no windows or clocks at all. The whole floor was rather dimly lit. I was put into a small room, about 8 x 8 feet that had a bed in it and nothing else. I was right across the hall from the nurse’s station and I had to stay there with the door open. In my terribly dark state, time became distorted and eternity stretched out before me. It seemed like years before they came and took some blood and ran an EEG on me.

I had not slept well for more than three hours a day on a consistent basis for about 5 months. I started to have visions of things that were being done to me beyond my will. I was a total puppet whose consciousness and actions could be manipulated through drugs and various signals and words. I had visions of violent acts I had been put through, and had been forced to engage in. I had visions of being forced to watch terrible acts of torture and perform depraved sexual acts. I would lose consciousness for a while and then come back to awareness. I had no idea how much time had lapsed, and each time I would come back into awareness I would have visions of horrible things I had been put through while I was not completely aware. My consciousness had been compartmentalized. Multiple personalities that were not aware of each other existed in my psyche. These personalities could be freely switched between through signals, words, or a shot of some vile, inhumane drug.

I was fading in and out of these horrific visions. After a decade my wife called the nurse’s station. I thought she knew about everything that was going on in the assessment unit and was a part of this terrible game they were playing with me. She spoke lovingly to me and said she would take care of me…forever. Forever had taken on an ominous reality to me. I was doomed...forever. It appeared to me to be just another ploy. Just another cruel act designed to torment me.

I then realized that I was really in hell.

It was rather dark on the ward. At one point I heard loud music- a lullaby like what you would play for a baby. Years went by. There were a few other people there, but they weren’t real patients. They were demons…agents of evil.

After a century I was laying on my bed. I became lucid. The horror I had felt started to fade. I realized that I was in hell because somehow my presence in ordinary reality was detrimental to all of humanity…all of creation. I had been banished to the underworld for the good of everything and everyone else.

I then thought to myself, “If that’s the case then so be it. I’ll be damned. If that’s what it takes to help everyone else, then so be it.” At that point, I accepted my fate of being in hell for eternity.

Then a shift in my consciousness took place. When it became about everyone else and no longer about me, in my own mind, I was offered salvation- a ticket out of Hades. I’d never been so grateful in my life. I was released from my torment.

The patients became real patients. The doctors and nurses real doctors and nurses. The Triple A Assessment unit a real hospital. My loving, beautiful wife my real loving, beautiful wife. I told her that it seemed like ages since I had seen her. She said I’d been on the ward for thirty hours.

I was released out of double doors theatrically by two nurses. The light of the day was brilliant. I embraced my wife who was there waiting for me. The audience of all of humanity roared and clapped with approval. Bravo!

The changes that followed were dramatic and are still ongoing. It’s only been about a year. I was reading the other day about near death experiences, and what has been occurring in me since my hospitalization is exactly the kind of thing that happens to people who survive near death experiences.

I’ve run across a quote by William James three times lately from independent sources in my readings that I think is relevant here:
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different…No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”

I was off work for about five days after my release from the hospital. I spent the time with my wife who I had taken to be some sort of guru. I suppose I was still in a delusional state…but maybe not. Or maybe not in a detrimental way. We watched movies and we would go out for short walks.

I was thinking that the world had stopped and was transitioning into some kind of utopia. The delusion was deepened due to the inactivity around my house. No one was outside doing anything. There was very little traffic that I noticed. I went to the family doctor with my wife, and when I went to pay the copay they said I didn’t have a copay. I took that to mean health care was free.

I thought I had been on the psych ward for much longer than 30 hours. It really felt like a very long time. Decades. But somehow I hadn’t aged. I was the last person to start to become aware of it all…of how it all really is.

One morning at sun-up while I was off, the sky was clear, not a cloud to be seen, and the day was crisp. There was a morning frost on the ground. My wife/guru and I went for a little walk down the street. I was suddenly struck by the incredible beauty of it all…of everything. It was all I could do to keep from crying. I had a huge lump in my throat.

I suppose my behavior during this time seemed very strange. I was thinking that all the struggle and strife had come to an end. That humanity had found its way to universal love, and we were finally taking care of each other.

On the last day before I returned to work, after it was becoming clear to me that this wasn’t utopia, I told my wife that I felt like I was on the verge of a spiritual breakthrough, but something was going wrong and I was watching it all slip away. It was heartbreaking to me. I was wondering what I had done wrong. I wanted to stay in that place of universal love.

Over the next week, when I went back to work, I would drift in and out of bad states. Reality was back…or maybe it’s what the early psychedelic pioneers coined “game reality.” I was mean to my wife at one point and she said she just wanted the old me back. I got an increase on the meds, and here we have the old me…and the old reality.

I wrote that in mid-February of this year. I recently had a memory of the incredible beauty of that day I was talking about, and I made a note to myself to always remember that. Because that’s what utopia really feels like, and it is a glorious thing. Even though I was in a delusional state about the affairs of the world, that feeling of universal love was very real. I think that’s what it will feel like when we transition beyond this life.

The really interesting thing about all of that besides the boundless beauty and exhilaration of universal love, is that I was completely untroubled by mental illness during that week I was at the house feeling that love all around me and thinking that the world had finally found its way to universal, loving freedom. And that was before I got the increase in the medication. It was only after that feeling of boundless love faded, and the harsh world that we all live in now returned, that the mental illness returned. This leads me to believe that my illness is a reaction to the insane world in which we live.


I wrote all of the preceding a few months back. I'm sitting here in the early morning at my home. The sun has not risen yet. But when it does it's going to be a similar day as the day I noticed the inherent beauty of the world. As the sun comes up, I'm going to go outside and bask in the golden light. I still feel that universal love that I experienced on occasion now days. It's usually just for a moment, but when it comes it reminds of what I think our ultimate fate is. This morning I can feel that love. It's stronger than usual, although not as strong as that time I wrote about earlier. I wish everyone could feel that love. It would transform our world in an instant.