Dear Friend,
Something totally unexpected happened to me when I was in my late twenties. I was at my parents’ home reading a book. Suddenly it felt like an explosion went off and everything disappeared–the room, the body, thought... everything. What remained is light. Specifically, it felt like I was in the middle of the sun. The short version of the story is I almost left the lifetime that day, but was guided back. There was more to do. When I came back, things were radically different.
That experience rocked the foundation of my perceptual, conceptual, emotional, and identity-based experience of life, and took many years to integrate–a process that continues today. The process could’ve been easily misunderstood by myself and others were it not for my grounding in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta and exploration of consciousness as a child, and the many guides I’ve had along the way.
I’ve seen how easily experiences interpreted through today’s culture can be framed as illness, disorder, and diagnosis. At times this can be helpful, especially to call attention to a difficulty and get others involved, but I think we’ve gone far off the deep end, as you’ll see in this ebook, which is taken from a talk I gave. I’ve seen it happen with family, friends, and my patients–and it could have happened with me, so I now talk about the ignorance I am seeing.
I offer this text at the feet of all people who are suffering in this world because of misunderstanding and fear on the part of the majority of the population. May this bring a way forward that honors all of our innate intelligence, capacity, and love.
Love and gratitude,
Anoop Kumar, MD
Table of Contents
Part 1: Setting the Frame
1. We Don’t Know What We Are Talking About
2. Where the Stigma of “Mental Illness” Really Comes From
3. The Culture of Dis-ease
4. What’s the Solution?
Part 2: Q&A
5. Can you say any more about hallucinations? Are they all bad?
6. How do we bring awareness to this?
7. What else can we do?
8. What about some of these perceptions like extraterrestrials? 9. Can anxiety turn into depression?
10. Let's say I have a fear of heights. Whenever I drive, if I go to a higher elevation and start coming down, I feel anxious. How do I address that? At what point do you start seeing a doctor for something like that?
11. Aren’t physical and mental problems different?
12. Are such problems passed on through our genes? Or is it our culture?
13. What do you mean by Connection?
14. Meditative inquiry
Resources
About the Author
About Numocore