I have been looking at an article (New Scientist 24 January 2014) passed to me about people suffering from epilepsy who have experienced bliss with the onset of seizures. Fyodor Dostoevsky described it as “A happiness unthinkable in the normal state and unimaginable for anyone who hasn’t experienced it…I am then in perfect harmony with myself and the entire universe” (The Idiot).
Scientists are trying to find the cause of this state through electrical stimulation of the brain and it is with this in mind that I draw from my own experience, not of epilepsy but of meditation. Subjects with epilepsy who have experienced this profound momentary experience immediately makes me think of the TM technique (transcendental mediation) and the experience of what is described as the ‘transcendent state of consciousness’. In fact, the article in New Scientist ends by saying there are fortunately safer ways of experiencing the same feeling through meditation.
I practice TM, which cannot be learned from a book but once learned opens up a whole new world to the initiated and experience of bliss is one aspect of this. Perhaps it could help epilepsy sufferers lessen the more unpleasant effects of a seizure? Science is a wonderful thing!
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