Schizophrenia has been part of me since childhood. There are terrifying experiences that I would rather be without, while other incidents have had a profound impact on the life path I have chosen. In these incidents, the mind has taken me on a metaphysical journey. I have understood that what I have experienced and still experience is on a consciousness level that people without Schizophrenia don’t visit in their minds. That world is beyond their grasp. With that said, it does not mean that I have access to a higher consciousness level because what is higher? Is it something superior, more intellectual? No. I have contacted a portal that opens into a world where chaos and extrasensory rules and out of it seeps another world.
Schizophrenia is a bit like an emotional roulette. You never know what happens when you spin the wheel. Occasionally, there is a jackpot; a mental state manifests itself that transforms you. For me, that mental state has been revelations. Revelations are, in general, associated with religious and psychotic people. If I were a nun and had an epiphany, it would be a sign from God, but if you experience Schizophrenia and experience a vision, you are by definition psychotic. Because you cannot prove a revelation scientifically, it can only be defined and understood as beliefs and faith. It’s a conviction about a definitive truth without evidence to support it. In faith, reality changes; you think, feel, and experience in a different way.
Schizophrenia is often associated with suffering. The psychiatrist considers psychosis a painful ailment, but is it only that? Are there nuances that we do not see because it is a detached spectator, an outsider that observes? What if we turn our gaze into the subjective world? What if we see the world from the perspective of the person that faces the ordeal? Is it then possible to find nuances, places of joy, and enthusiasm within? And what happens when the psychoses abate? I want to challenge the conventional idea of psychosis as painful. Due to my personal experience, I have found a different reality that does not correlate with the standard view.
Once in Rome, I talked to a catholic priest. I asked him; how does it feel when God calls you for the first time? He told me that he was euphoric, and it was like being in love. I recognize the feeling of being euphoric and in love with the world when I have visions. For me, it has always been an intense experience. Maybe it seems bizarre when observed from the outside, but visions have fundamentally changed me. So how could a revelation look like?
Revelation is like being filled with the light of God. Light appears like a laser beam and penetrates my body through the scalp and into the brain. Thoughts explode and scatter like molecules. A state of euphoria absorbs everything. The universe expands, grows, and ideas crystallize and show themselves clearly. Thoughts appear as signs in the frontal sinus, not as letters but as patterns and formations in pulsating colors. They communicate. It is God that speaks. The voice neither belongs to man or woman but encompasses all. God seeps in and places itself in the bones. Everything illuminates from the inside—the light radiates from every tendon, muscle, and fiber. The skin is hypersensitive. It vibrates and spins as electricity. Thousands of small bright animals crawl under the skin. They are catalysts for the light and God’s voice. My gaze turns inward, and I experience the body. With my inner eye, I see the lever and the intestinal system. I hear my heartbeat and feel the pulse. The nervous system is fluorescent like a transparent jellyfish. The brain sends waves of thoughts and whispers into space. I hear, feel, and sense everything. Emotionally I am whole. In my brain, a thought travels and penetrates my nervous system. The thought makes no sense as a word; it’s a sound that repeats itself. There is a clear separation between me and the world. A porous membrane covers the body and protects me.
The outer world becomes invisible. External things are foggy and deformed. Focus disappears like a lens that zooms out. However, if I direct my focus consciously on an object, it steps out of the fog. If I look away, it seems to disappear; things only exist if I look directly at them and they are in my immediate vicinity. The world dependents on my direct gaze and my eyes control it. Overwhelmingly, the world lights up with frighteningly beautiful clarity. I merge with the surroundings and transcend. A vision penetrates my mind with profound clarity. God admonishes and instructs as it speaks directly to me. Divine insight appears in the form of signs and messages. I have a special mission. Individuals disappear; they are invisible and nonexistent. I am the only sensory being. Everything rotates around my axis. When I move, I leave behind traces of shining footprints. Sounds are dim. The air smells of something sweet.
Once, I traveled to Japan because the light guided me in that direction. During the flight, time and space dissolved. My mind carried me away. In Japan, I walked in the mountains. It was spring, and the cherry trees blossomed. I went along a river. Stone statues were portraying Buddhist monks. I spent the night in the grass and heard God’s voice in the flowers, leaves, and water. God told me that I should seek out a monastery in the mountains, and with the sound of a bell, the whole world would crystallize itself, and the truth would appear to humanity. I did find the bell, but the truth did not materialize. However, I was in a state of euphoria. When I returned to Denmark, I couldn’t remember a lot, except the overwhelming sense of joy and contentment that was still present.
As I grow older, I experience that states that I believed were an innate part of me have begun to fade. Epiphanies rarely visit me anymore. I miss them; they have altered my perception of reality and given me profound insight into another dimension; a mystical state. I have had moments of profound clarity and beauty during epiphanies that are hard to comprehend or put into words. The epiphanies may fade, but I will never forget the condition. My nervous system and body remember. They are inscribed in my soul and memory, like imprints in the sand. Recently, the voices I have heard my entire life reduced to a mumble in the back of my mind. I thought that I would be relieved, but instead, I felt emptiness and sorrow. Everything became silent inside me, and it was terrifying.
A psychiatrist would claim that my psychosis has decreased, and the painful ailment that I have been suffering from my entire life is in remission. He would also argue that the involuntary delusional insight that I have gained through epiphanies or mystical experience is fragmented and not a genuine mystical experience. Perhaps there is some truth to this claim, but I would say otherwise. This “otherness” that has run through my existence is genuine. It has run concurrently with my ordinary consciousness and transformed my existence. I do not claim that Schizophrenia and psychosis are not painful, but I would argue that there is much to learn in the process. Schizophrenia is a strange fish; we don’t know everything about it. Rules of logic don’t apply here. In my experience, there is much to learn and unexpected gifts to receive from within this condition.