Similar thing happened to David Icke. He was a successful footballer and TV commentator before he had a vision and started claiming to be the son of God and making his family wear turquoise track suits.
Everyone laughed at him to his face, but I felt sorry for him, it was obvious he'd had some sort of breakdown. He had to build a belief system to explain it out of stuff he found in society, channellers and any mystic he ran into, and then he met someone who'd seen giant reptiles and the rest is history (and if it isn't you've got some eyebrow raising books to read). Icke's mind healed round his delusions and he functions without seeming baffled by it himself. Makes a lot of money too. I don't think George will though, it was just too "out there" to be credible. All these deities all being friends just sent me into an objectivity frenzy. There are nice fantasies and there is new age drivel and this went beyond what I could shrug off and I know people who channel Jesus! But I think you may have hit a nail on the head there Curtis, he the reason to ask the question and he had a belief system ready and waiting with sympathetic friends to encourage him. I think if I was close to him I would have been concerned, but to see it on TV I assumed he was aware and happy with what was going on and not just as a personal reality. He wanted us to receive it because he can't tell the difference. I didn't think to feel like he might be needing need help, but then you've got to feel like you do to need it don't you? You've awakened a humility in me. I just hope he's as happy with his new world as David Icke is with his. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : I am a brain guy. I think we need to get to the bottom of how it functions before we can even start to make claims beyond what it produces and dealing with worlds like what happens after we die and the brain rots away. (or gets burned away before it rots.) From what I could tell with Maharishi, he was not exempt from his brain function slowing down with age and it affecting who he was. Fundamentally, he changed as he grew older just like everyone else. The brain is my God. So let's look at what the brain is capable of. Some patients who have a certain kind of stroke in a specific part of their brain go physically blind. It is mechanical, the brain cannot process what the optic nerve brings in, or it is the optic nerve itself that goes out, I don't know, but they can't see. Oddly, their brain immediately creates such a compelling replica of sensory experience, that the person is incapable of distinguishing this self generated experience from that of seeing the outer world. It takes doctors some time and many proof tests to convince these patients that this world their brain has cooked up, does not exist outside their mind. They cannot tell. And like in so many other cases of our brain's limitations they are incensed at first to be challenged on this fundamental distinction. It is really hard to accept this harsh truth about our fallibility. Because the mind is always creating what we call our perceptions out of the flimsy sensory data of our world, this is not a new thing really. What is new is that it is capable of it without any outside reference point. I don't have to doubt that George was in a waking state when he had the "experience" of talking with Maharishi and others for a prolonged period of time. This is what the brain does for us to see a plate as a plate. What is different is that we don't have to go to the theory that it really was an external Maharishi that he was talking with in such detail. This is not even rare. We are Olympic level mis-percievers and worse analyzers of our limitations. We think we are great at fundamental things that we really suck at. Like distinguishing fact from fantasy in altered brain states. Totally suck at this. Let's look at what bought this on. Barry was on to something with his connection of fear of death. George's sister had died, completely out of the blue, no warning, It was a total shock. I know someone who just went through something similar and had a mental breakdown. When he went to the doctor for some relief, the doctor explained to him what happens to the brain under extreme stress and shock. In a phrase: it F's up. All bets are off for what can happen when your brain goes through this. The normal processing functions are plunged into malfunctions. You can have extended conversations with dead people. Whatever the brain can find to alleviate the stress, it will do. In his case he became almost catatonic and incapable of working for a while. His brain just said, "F it all peace out." He was not a flakey person. He was a working professional just like George. His brain just had enough and it quit. George's experience is not unheard of, doctors know all about it. What is unique is that he had a belief system that supported his taking it at face value instead of saying, " I am in trouble and need help." Despite the unattractive qualities inherent in the grandiosity of his claims, I feel for the guy, I really do. As I told George, there is nothing in what he said that requires us to assume that is coming from special people on the other side. Any of us could have come up with every claim he made. And you would think that a committee of this caliber could come up with ONE thing that none of us could have spouted. One thing. Big like cure for cancer, or small like a new compound that gets those shitty labels off of stuff we buy without leaving that sticky crap on them better than that nasty "Goo Gone" Hell, I would settle for a prediction on all of today's horse races with all the winnings going to charity. There was none of that. It all spilled out in its chaotic glory from a brain in crisis . I sensed his fragility when I spoke with him personally at the very end. I was not looking at a representative of the badasses who brought us the not so holy tradition, or Christianity or even a mind like Plato's. I was interacting with a man in crises, holding it together for his family and business, but so far off the rails that the cascading fallout from this public event will haunt his family for a long time. Seeing his earnest daughters at the event reminded me who was gunna bear the brunt if Dad goes down for the count. There is a sad bravery in how he was trying to manage this "event" in his brain. If one hand puts him up as the king of this world and the next, and the other option is to consider that this is a man who, like so many others, is facing a neurological challenge, I know which I am betting on. He doesn't need egging on by enablers. He needs a hug and some professional help. And he, like so many others, can pull through and put his life back together. The person I knew did, but he needed a hand, and knew that he needed it, and his family supported him in getting help, and he drew the lucky card of having his brain aberration not include a Mardi Gras parade of dead people and mythological archetypes egging him on to get out there and spread the word. Luck of the freak'n draw. Could have been any of us. Whew!
