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There were long periods where I was convinced I was merely dreaming the entire world. That no other human being really existed apart from me. This was an extremely liberating as well as a terrifying thought. How would I ever know what was real and what was just a dream? Did it matter? I would often ask myself why I couldn't manage to dream a more interesting and less violent dream. Maybe I was just a character in somebody else's dream and I would simply die once they awoke. At other times, I felt like the devil himself and that I should definitely be locked away forever or lobotomised if there was even the remotest chance I would act on any of the thoughts in my head. Surely people like me should be quietly put to sleep so we don't disturb the smooth running of this beautiful civilisation. As I continued my journey through the infinite landscape of schizophrenia, I began to believe I was a prophet. The "voices" in my head were giving me a message that would transform the world, if I could only get people to believe me. I seemed to have an instinctive knowledge which had never been taught to me. I "just knew" the entire system of society was fatally flawed. It was painfully obvious to me that any society based on competition would always have problems. Competition creates "winners" and "losers". Yet in the end everybody loses. An enormous amount of negative emotional energy is created. Anger, resentment, depression, envy. These are all inevitable results of such a system. This negative emotional energy is very real and fills the environment. It seeps into every corner of the world like the pollution in the air we all breathe.
Surely it would require nothing short of divine intervention to fundamentally alter the current system. If so, what was this divine source waiting for? How bad did the world have to get before it would step in and fix things up? How many millions would have to starve or die in wars before the transformation would take place. I had a curious thought. Perhaps the divine source was inside every one of us, just waiting to be released.
But who would listen to a psychiatric patient? And even if they did, would it make any difference? By conforming to a monstrous society, have we not all become monsters already? Perhaps some are simply more monstrous than others. In time, I came to discover that psychosis could create ecstasy as well as agony. Ecstasy so exquisite that it is indescribable. Ecstasy that is so addictive it consumes your every waking thought. Once I discovered this fact, it became my mission in life to find a way of fine-tuning my psychosis so that it produced far more ecstasy than agony. I fully realised I was playing with fire and could very easily destroy myself in the process. I even discussed my theories with psychiatrists who rather predictably t old me I was seeking to do the impossible. This only spurred me on. If their wretchedly limited minds advised me against it, then I must be onto something. I felt like one of Arthur's Knights in search of the Holy Grail. At times, I lost all confidence and a little voice inside my head would say, "Geoff you are not a prophet sent from God. This is all just a sick, twisted fantasy created by your subconscious to help you cope with the fact that you have a defective personality which doesn't enable you to deal with people in an enjoyable manner and get close to them." So I would make another attempt at "rehabilitation" back into a society that I knew was just as lost as I was. These attempts were generally half-hearted for many reasons. I could never shake the maddening thought that maybe I was giving up my quest just when the Grail was within reach. I also figured that my quest had already done untold damage to my conscious and subconscious mind that I would never be able to re-enter modern society in any truly meaningful fashion. Maybe I would somehow have to learn to live in this limbo state. So I found myself back inside a psychiatric hospital. This was just perfect, I thought. I never expected to be back in a place like this. Maybe this time things would be different. Waves of absurd optimism rolled over me. Sitting in the lounge room, I wrote a poem but it didn't turn out quite the way I had pictured it in my head: I told the doctor my soul was hurting, He gave me pills to calm my brain, Then he made sure the staff were alerting They must all think that I'm insane.
A million thoughts rattled through my mind and for once I decided not to fight them or even analyse them but just let them happen. It felt like a very Zen thing to do:
"I am the implausible"
"I am living inside the plastic dreams of the insane."
"Don't bother me just at the moment, I'm trying to rearrange the thought patterns of the entire human race. It's very tricky work."
"I was a beautiful madman, walking through the 12th century"
"Where is my life and where is my lifetime"
"Crazy people are the only ones worth talking to. The others should be avoided like the plague. Just being near them can deaden your brain."
"I'm waiting for the day when we all take a vow of silence and communicate by telepathy."
"I'm not a madman. I am the ghost of your lifetimes."
" Twelve is my name and twelve is my number. Twelve is twelve and twelve is the only number."
"Can we ever know if our lives are real?"
"How many ways can a man be insane? How many ways can a man walk through a train?"
"I'm not mad and I'm not insane. I have lions and tigers in my brain."
"Here doggie. What's your little number"
"I'm not in your reality at the moment. I am away with the fairies and I may not be coming back for a long time."
"I have lived a thousand lives. I could bounce on a thousand knives."
"Normality is actually the most bizarre and dangerous cult on the planet."
"Life is weird and you are the weirdest."
"Tell me why my life is so strange. Tell me why things never really change."
"I am part of the beneficial nightmare of life."
"Show me what kind of world I would ever need to live in."
"I don't really want to be a genius. I'd much rather be an ordinary person in a society that I didn't regard as hopelessly warped."
"Schizophrenia is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of realities. You are in fact living every conceivable lifetime simultaneously."
I didn't manage to record them all on paper. Whose thoughts were these? Were they mine? They seemed to bubble up from nowhere. They made no sense and yet they made perfect sense to me. Was someone reprogramming my entire consciousness? If so< I would be foolish to resist. I was terrified, intrigued and exhilarated all at once. With my mind still in overdrive, I start talking to John again. My mind tossed around an interesting philosophical debate. If someone is delusional, is it okay to feed that delusion if that makes them interested in you and brings them some enjoyment. John was obviously interested in astronomy, so I told him I was an alien and he laughed out loud. It was good to see someone laugh in this place. I went on to tell him that my race of aliens live inside a black hole. I cannot function in society any longer. My mind has merged with the fabric of the universe and it will shatter into a million pieces if this situation is changed. My inhibitions and fears have dissolved. I have become the universal soldier. If you know the truth, it will shatter your mind and you will be committed. If you merge with the truth you will be cured. On the third day, I rose again. I rose from my bed at 6 AM having had barely three hour's sleep. This meant a total of possibly 10 hours sleep in the previous 5 days. Generally, I would expect to be exhausted in such circumstances. However I decided to allow myself the possibility that exhaustion was not necessarily going to occur. After breakfast I walked outside and onto the tennis court. What followed was absolutely THE most mind-blowing experience of my entire life. I walked continuously around the outer perimeter of the court for what seemed like several hours but was most likely only about 45 minutes. I opened my mind to a million realities and embraced them all simultaneously without conscious effort. I knew everything and nothing. I became everybody and nobody. It made no sense and it made perfect sense. I could see every even t of my entire life all at once and I knew the reason for all of them. It was as if karma was a river and I could see it flowing through the hills and valleys of my existence on this planet. I felt connected to every living creature and wished to help them in any way I could imagine. I did whatever I could to help those around me. I helped someone with some new batteries for their Walkman. I found I had not needed to turn my own Walkman on at all since I was so busy absorbing the atmosphere around me. I made little gestures and waved to people spontaneously and greeted people several times throughout the course of each day. Simple gestures like a "thumbs up" or a wave made people smile. If you act this way in "normal" society, people think you "strange" or at least eccentric. What a sha me.
I walked out onto the tennis court again and I could feel the trees growing. I reflected on the fact that people all too rarely live "in the moment". To be blissfully unaware of the events of the past or any need to plan for the future. It is a beautiful idea but unrealistic in such a frantic society. There are things to be done. Appointments to keep. Responsibilities to be taken care of. We have made our lives a lot more complicated than they need to be. A lot more complex than is healthy for us. Deep down , our hearts, our minds and our souls are screaming out for a simpler time when people co-operated rather than competed, where they united instead of dividing, where they cared for each other rather than surviving any way they can. Where they felt part of nature rather than trying to exploit it and conquer it. I had no idea if it is even possible to return to such a time. I started to wish that I had magical powers. A life of absolute spontaneity every second is surely an impossible dream. Or is it? I wondered. If something can be imagined then there must be some way to make it happen. Perhaps just daring to imagine the "impossible" was all that was required. Surrounded by all these beautiful but fragile souls, I wanted to reach inside every one of them and remove their pain. Even if that meant I would have to absorb it into my own soul. Now that all my fears had dissolved, it was as if I was seeing for the first time. I looked into the eyes of everyone around me with no hint of hesitation or reluctance from either end. I could see God in all of those eyes. I knew I could never view the world or myself the same way ever again. This experience of being able to see God in other people's eyes has become a frustratingly rare since my return to the outside world. My dream is that one day everyone will see God in themselves and in every person they meet. Maybe one day soon. Maybe I am just a dreamer. Maybe. I realise very few people will see my tale as anything other than an overactive imagination. Possibly that is all that it is. If you imagine something strongly enough then maybe it simply becomes real. If this is madness, then everyone should be mad. As I write these words, I am so "together" it is almost scary. It would indeed be scary if I did not have a deep, inexpressible, unexplainable conviction that this experience has a divine origin. There is no ego in me at the moment. No jealousy. No envy. No insecurity. No fear. No resentment. I remember vividly what t was like when I did feel all those negative emotions but it just that. Just a memory. This sounds like an impossible dream and I would once have laughed out loud at anyone who dared express su ch sentiments. I am not saying I have all the answers - I wish I did.
So, there it is. The tale of my soul's awakening. A tale too preposterous to be fiction. If you find it hard to believe, I completely understand. Having experienced it first hand, I still struggle to believe it myself. In the weeks since, I have since discovered that a soul doesn't necessarily stay awake. There are many things in the modern world that can put a soul to sleep again. Falling in love is the spark that wakes up most souls. I had to wait until I fell in love with the entire universe. I l u with a poem that comes close to capturing the way I felt in Acacia ward during those seven days.