Bipolar Enlightenment. Bipolar Enlightenment. Could it be that these two experiences which seem so different from each other could actually be on a sensory level the same thing? At first you may think this is impossible, but when you take a closer look, both experiences start with the same event, a collapse of the ego. Now most people already know that bipolar disorder can have some pretty negative symptoms like spending lots of money, having big mood swings, or even hallucinations in paranoia, which I talk about at length in other videos. But few people are aware that a bipolar manic episode can also include many symptoms that have been associated throughout history with glimpses of spiritual enlightenment. So whether you're a Buddhist monk who gets there by meditating for 20 years, or you're a 19 year old kid who gets hit by in a shopping mall, both experiences will most likely involve aspects which are deeply spiritual in nature. And when I say spiritual, what I really mean is mystical. So now I'm going to take you through a series of sensory experiences which are common to both the person going through an experience of enlightenment and the person going through the type of acute psychosis which is commonly associated with bipolar one. And to illustrate my point, I'll be using the work of my favorite artist, Salvador Dali, who I'm sure you would agree if you were alive today would be heavily medicated. The first thing that often happens in a bipolar manic crisis and is also known to happen in different forms of enlightenment such as a Kundalini awakening is that you have this incredible surge of high energy that's usually the first thing that hits you. As I described in detail in the first video of this series, the cause of this surge in energy is that there's an ego collapse and the soul is set free for the first time. Speaking personally, the deepest mystic experience that I had was the sense of oneness with everything. You lose the feeling of separation between your body and everything else so that you feel that you are everything and everything is you. You feel as if you've accessed a deeper level of reality and with that there is a deeper level of understanding regarding who we are and what we're doing here on earth. The experience is indescribable in terms of communicating in normal language and as a result the person in the experience may try and express themselves by using metaphors. A person's senses may also be heightened with improved vision, taste, smell and hearing. They also have a heightened sensitivity towards other people. You can feel other people's vibe or read their thoughts in a way that you never could before. For many people there's a sense of timelessness with some people having the sensation that they can control time, stopping or starting time based on their own individual desire or concentration. There will often be an overwhelming sense of love coming out of you with an affection for other people and an appreciation for beauty so that you may find yourself having expressions of love for even plants or animals. There is a release of many repressions in these experiences and one of the biggest is the release of the shame we have of our own bodies. This is why it's so common for people to strip naked during psychosis. And with all of this happening there's just an overwhelming feeling of sacredness to everything. As if you're in the most magnificent church or temple in the world everything around you seems to be touched by God. As Dr. John Wear Perry describes in the book The Far Side of Madness, you may feel that you're in a type of middle world, not quite heaven, not quite earth, a sort of purgatory or bardo in which all of these experiences are happening. And very often in this middle world you will feel that you're being tested by God in some way and that maybe even people are coming to you not as they appear as in their earthly name, but as some sort of characters that are there to test you. And a big part of this test will involve a confrontation with death. Most people feel that they are somehow encountering their own death or think that they have died in this process. As part of the healing which takes place there is often a regression into the origins of your own life. Many people find themselves returning to their early childhood or even into the womb of their mother. Others have the sensation of returning to the beginning of the cosmos, the big bang in a sense. And for some it's a combination of both as well as other powerful experiences such as recalling a past life. And as your process starts to move through you begin to have a shift in your values, your own feelings and sense of personal integrity become more important to you than they ever were before. There is also a broadening of your consciousness, an elevation to a more social global consciousness. So the global issues such as the environment or poverty which maybe were in the back of your mind before, now are right in front of you as a pressing issue. So like I was saying in the beginning, if you're a 19 year old kid who's been hit by a bipolar man at crisis, you should easily be able to recognize some if not all of these sensory experiences that I'm talking about. But what you didn't know is that throughout history, all of these sensory experiences that you have had have somehow been related to different forms of enlightenment. These mystical sensory experiences have been associated with satore in Zen, samadhi in Hinduism, nirvana from Buddhism, and even the visions which Christians saints would have. And in the west, these experiences have been recognized by a number of psychologists and psychiatrists as well, leading edge people such as Dr. Stan Groff, who refer to these experiences as being part of a spiritual emergency. Ken Wilber refers to a variety of mystic experiences, and I think all of these would be related to what he calls nature mysticism. And Abraham Maslow, who is most famous for the Maslow hierarchy of needs, referred to what I describe here as part of a peak experience. So there's clearly a history of understanding these experiences on a psychological level in the west. However, what is enlightenment or a mystic experience in the mainstream today? Well, according to science, psychiatry, and our supposedly modern society, enlightenment is insanity. It's a bipolar manic crisis, an acute psychosis, it doesn't exist. It's a complete breakdown of our rational thought caused by brain damage or a chemical imbalance. It has no value to your life whatsoever, and it's to be stopped with medications at all costs. Now what I want to do in part two of this video is show you some examples of how each of these spiritual experiences can lead to some very strange behavior on your part. Behavior which everyone around you will mistakenly see as signs of mental illness. So that's up next.