He claimed he had attained cosmic consciousness
and could look into people’s eyes and take them there.
I knew he had had a mental breakdown, a disconnection
from reality, by his erratic speech patterns.
And he spent the rest of the time I knew him in and out
of psychiatric wards in hospitals.
There are or were spiritual adepts in India called masts,
who got so spiritually high when they attained the Oneness
that they could no longer function on the earth plane
and had to be taken care of, though revered.
The prevailing questions are were they mentally ill
or fully enlightened, did they have bona fide
spiritual experiences or counterfeit ones,
or were their mystical experiences a combination of both?
I don’t think anyone can definitely say for sure
in all of these cases.
And maybe in some of these cases what
seemed like breakdowns were breakthroughs.
Bob Boyd