lunatic or psychic

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form
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lunatic or psychic

Post by form »

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-sup ... cOmfXr2PqA

Such experiences appeared in the sutta as normal is considered as mental disorders in modern medical diagnose.
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mikenz66
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by mikenz66 »

Hi Form,
We might say someone is ‘hearing voices’ if you hear a voice when no-one is present with you, or which other people with you cannot hear.
form wrote: Such experiences appeared in the sutta as normal is considered as mental disorders in modern medical diagnose.
Can you give some sutta references that describe this sort of 'hearing voices'?

:heart:
Mike
form
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by form »

mikenz66 wrote:Hi Form,
We might say someone is ‘hearing voices’ if you hear a voice when no-one is present with you, or which other people with you cannot hear.
form wrote: Such experiences appeared in the sutta as normal is considered as mental disorders in modern medical diagnose.
Can you give some sutta references that describe this sort of 'hearing voices'?

:heart:
Mike
For example, 1) the Buddha communicating with other beings, he heard a voice calling him.......
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bodom
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by bodom »

form wrote:
mikenz66 wrote:Hi Form,
We might say someone is ‘hearing voices’ if you hear a voice when no-one is present with you, or which other people with you cannot hear.
form wrote: Such experiences appeared in the sutta as normal is considered as mental disorders in modern medical diagnose.
Can you give some sutta references that describe this sort of 'hearing voices'?

:heart:
Mike
For example, 1) the Buddha communicating with other beings, he heard a voice calling him.......
Hi form,

Can you post the sutta you are reffering too?

:anjali:
Liberation is the inevitable fruit of the path and is bound to blossom forth when there is steady and persistent practice. The only requirements for reaching the final goal are two: to start and to continue. If these requirements are met there is no doubt the goal will be attained. This is the Dhamma, the undeviating law.

- BB
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Sam Vara
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by Sam Vara »

In the Devatasamyutta and Devaputtasamyutta of the Samyutta Nikaya, devas and their offspring arrive in the Buddha's presence and talk to him. Normally, they appear as beautiful visions and illuminate the grove where he is staying, but sometimes the sutta has them "standing to one side" and speaking to him. This might be consistent with the Buddha "hearing a voice", but usually the "standing to one side" refers to beings (normally human) who approach the Buddha in the normal way. I can't think of any instances where the Buddha merely hears the voice of one contacting him.
chownah
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by chownah »

I guess if I claimed that devas came into my presence and talked to me (or not)......
chownah
SarathW
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by SarathW »

Such experiences appeared in the sutta as normal is considered as mental disorders in modern medical diagnose.
If you hear I am calling in your mobile phone do you think that you have a mental disorder?
“As the lamp consumes oil, the path realises Nibbana”
befriend
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by befriend »

IMHO hearing voices is just demons talking, maras trying to keep you from gaining progress. I don't think your hearing other humans thoughts that you are sitting next to on the subway. But I guess it's a psychic activity. Schizophrenics are typically above average intelligence and highly sensitive and tend to be spiritual or hyper religious the mania of bi polar at times is a state of super wholesomeness where one feels so positive and creative, aware and normally intelligent people when when manic can become genius.
Take care of mindfulness and mindfulness will take care of you.
binocular
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by binocular »

form wrote: considered as mental disorders in modern medical diagnose.
Our Western culture seems to be focused mostly on the visual while neglecting the other senses. "Seeing images" is not deemed strange, in fact, it's regarded as creativity. But "hearing voices" is supposedly evidence of something being wrong with one.
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form
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by form »

I happened to have a guide tour to the mental institute. There are some patients that have "contact" with some unseen beings.
Garrib
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by Garrib »

As a small child I had two "imaginary friends" named saucy and fifi - and I really kept this up for some time, but I can't remember if I ever "saw" or "heard" them or not! lol - my best guess is that these were products of my imagination and not devas or something else, but hey - who knows?? :tongue:
chownah
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by chownah »

Garrib wrote: - my best guess is that these were products of my imagination and not devas or something else, but hey - who knows?? :tongue:
What's the difference?
chownah
perkele
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by perkele »

chownah wrote:What's the difference?
chownah
May I draw the conclusion from your question that you believe there is no difference and that the Buddha and monks and ascetics of his time were just fantasizing when they talked about devas as real beings?
chownah
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by chownah »

perkele wrote: Tue Sep 26, 2017 8:47 pm
chownah wrote:What's the difference?
chownah
May I draw the conclusion from your question that you believe there is no difference and that the Buddha and monks and ascetics of his time were just fantasizing when they talked about devas as real beings?
I was talking about garrib's imaginary friends saucy and fifi. I don't really see what that has to do with buddha, monks, or ascetics who are all dead now. If garrib is just guessing as to whether they were devas or "just imaginary" as he says then really what is the difference....it seems that for garrib the manifestation of a deva or of imagination can not be differentiated....so what is the difference? Seems to me like there probably isn't a difference for garrib.
chownah
Edit: Also, isn't there a sutta that says something like the mind precedes all dhamas?
chownah
perkele
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Re: lunatic or psychic

Post by perkele »

Okay, I see. It is a hard problem, philosophcally, to differentiate between actually existing other beings or just one's own imagination of other beings. I thought about this a lot when I was a child: How do I know that the others actually exist? Could it not be that they are all just fidgets of my imagination? How can I know? And I did not come to an actual solution other than the conclusion "It is useless to think in that way." Because it did not help me at all with any kinds of problems I had to deal with other living beings (mostly humans), who seem to live autonomous lives independent of my own stream of consciousness. It makes no sense to think of them as just "fidgets of my imagination" if I have apparently not enough control over my own imagination to influence their behaviour just through my mental power alone.
We had a lot of threads dealing with the topic of solipsism here over time as well.
But
chownah wrote:Edit: Also, isn't there a sutta that says something like the mind precedes all dhamas?
I don't think that this can be taken as a "dhammic" justification for solipsism. The first two verses of the Dhammapada are concerned specifically with good and bad (mental, which is the forerunner of all verbal and bodily) kamma and its vipaka:
Dhp verses 1&2 wrote:1. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

2. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.
Also, "dhammas", here, is translated variably as "mental states" by some, or as phenomena by others, or as events, or even very generally as things.
I tend to agree most with the last very general translation as "things". Mind precedes all things. From the position of each individual living being and their stream of consciousness, this is definitely true. "Things" can not be accounted for divorced from experience, and neither can "other beings". But living, conscious beings are a special case, because by definition they experience things by themselves, from their own perspective. We have a concept of that even without being able to wrap our minds around theirs and seeing the world through their eyes, because even if it would logically "make sense" that they might as well be just fidgets of our imagination: If we don't have enough control over our imagination to influence them directly by our intentional imagination, this perspective is just practically useless.

Of course I don't know what the difference might be for Garrib and his case of "imaginary friends", and whether he even remembers it clearly enough to try and differentiate in hindsight.

I would say a good test for differentiating between the two might be whether we can consciously influence the behaviour of those "others" simply by the powers of conscious imagination alone or not.

An interesting case are dreams, which we probably all experience almost every night, and sometimes remember, sometimes not so clearly. While we are enthralled in a dream we cannot usually tell that this is just our imagination. Things seem to happen against our will. And even after waking up we can have the feeling that there was something real going on there, or that this dream world could be just another reality with even other actual living beings in it. Yes, it is a hard problem, I admit. And I don't really know a solution either.
:thinking:

Topics about solipsism:
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=17726
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=24044
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=19272
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=24770
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=29844

Nice movie: Waking Life

Okay, I might have taken the topic astray a bit with this... Sorry. :embarassed:
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