This thread belongs either here or in the Conversation. I threw it in here because this is the crowd I most want a response from, and I don't know how many of you cruise the Conversation.
So I used to work with a guy. Let's call him "Timothy". Tim was (and I'm sure still is) one of the sweetest, most caring people I have ever met. He always had time to listen to your problems. To him, everyone was worth helping. If you needed advice, or just someone to listen to you for a bit, Timothy was the guy to go to. His advice was always thoughtful, as if he had (gasp) really been paying attention to what you were saying and spent some time formulating a helpful repsonse. He helped me out with everything, from relationships to how to stay cool while waiting tables. He believed that many people who were not where they wanted to be in their life just needed some positive reinforcement, and that it was one of his callings in life to provide such positive reinforcement. He was one of those guys who gave off an aura of tranquility.
The thing was, you wanted to take your problems to Timothy because his advice seemed to come from a direction you hadn't thought of. And that was Tim all over. He himself seemed to come from a dimension that you hadn't discovered yet. People at work told me when I was hired that he was in a different world. Of course, this merely made me curious, and he and I became friends. We had similar tastes in books and music, and were both interested in spiritual and mental exploration. I liked him immediately because my crazy ideas weren't crazy to him. He understood where I was coming from. Sure, he was obviously in a different place than most folks, but we're all a little nuts, right? And sure, the marijuana probably didn't help, but it's never made anyone crazy, right? I mean, christ, who doesn't smoke dope in a restaraunt. To me, he was no different than the ultra-Christian who claimed to hear the voice of God and did her best to make everyone's day a little better. They were both people who heard voices and tried to help other people. Maybe they were crazy, but they were harmless.
Then one day Tim strolls into working half naked, startling some of our patrons. I was working at an Italian restaraunt, and half naked people are not normally part of the scene. Some of us ushered Tim into the back and tried to find out what the hell was going on. "Tim, buddy, where's your clothes?" I ask him. "I don't need them," he tells me, then adds: "By the way, are you the only one who can see me?"
Huh. Well, like I said, he had always been a little strange, even by my standards (more than a few of my friends have spent time in psych wards. I once built a time machine out of an old jumprope and a dead hamster. Don't talk to me about crazy...). And his roomate said he had done a fair bit of acid the night before and had burst into the roomate's room accusing him of "pissing on my goddess". The boss contacted his family, and Tim spent a few weeks in a nearby psych ward. A month or so after he got out, the boss let him come back to work. Tim still claimed to hear voices, but that was normal for him, and no matter how crazy everyone thought he was, he was still the nicest, most gentle man you could ever hope to meet. Everyone's excuse was "he's probably nuts, but he's harmless, and gave me some great advice about how to deal with my girlfriend".
Things continued without incident for a few months. Then one night I'm watching the news and I hear a report of a driver killing another driver because Satan told him to. The newspeople won't release his name until the killer's family is alerted, but I see Tim's car, all smashed up, on the scene. The reporter says the driver was a 34 year old Redford resident (which accurately describes Tim). I drive by his place and he's not there. I can't get a hold of him for the rest of the night.
As it turns out, Tim was out visiting some friends when Satan apparently told him to kill someone. He told the police later that he didn't want to kill old people or the very young, so he ran a red light and T-boned a twenty five year old son of a Fox 2 News reporter, killing him instantly. Thankfully, he never went to trial for murder, as the defense had no problem proving his insanity.
Now, this shocked everyone who knew Tim. I think a lot of us felt slightly guilty, as the signs of mental disorder were there all along. Sometimes I feel like I should've seen this coming.
So that's the thing, folks. How do you see this sort of thing coming? When normal folk talk about hearing voices, they go see a doctor and everything's great. But what about people who study magick, or are just into mental and spiritual exploration? I would bet that many who post in the magick forum hear "voices". Part of being involved in magick is dealing with the fear of insanity. When everyone is telling you that what you have choosen to believe is "crazy", you get used to that word and for a while it doens't scare you. Then you start practicing, and the doubt starts creeping in. "Holy shit, maybe I am crazy. I can't really be doing what I think I'm doing. Everyone else thinks I'm nuts, maybe they're right..." I've always thought that the only really important thing was to make sure that you still feel some empathy with the people around you, that you can still feel their pain and feel pain for them. That way you won't one day snap and hurt someone and end up locked away for the rest of your life like Tim.
But this whole deal has made me wonder about a lot of things, not least of which being my own sanity. My excuse for not being dangerously insane was that I know I don't like hurting people, and I try to avoid it wherever and whenever possible. Tim obviously still felt for other people, he seemed to share at least some common ground with most people. Why else would he always try to help them? I mean, fuck, that's why everyone let him get away with his little crazy moments. "He's harmless," we all thought. "Wouldn't dream of hurting a fly." So my question is this: how can you tell when a psychonaut has gone too far? |
To address what Leap said, I happen to agree, most people meditate and/or withdraw internally when embarking on some sort of mind expanding path. I certainly think it's important to meditate, but I also think it is equally important to party, run in the park, relate to friends and strangers, etc. External and internal focus is a matter of balance, extremes in either polarity will probably have detrimental effects on the psychonaut. I figure people assume that they have to go hide in a cave to learn anything about their minds, mostly because that is what media and our culture tend to teach us.