[paigetheoracle]

Could all mental illness be losing touch with reality, either through stress or lack of sleep from too much stress? Could this create a situation where the delineation between waking and sleeping disappears, creating a situation where the mind confuses one for the other and acts out the fantasy, believing it to be the reality? (science is grounded in what is/ was, rather than the imagination and what could be i.e. the art of falling apart).

Both Carlos Castenada and Anthony Peake ('Is there life after death? /Cheating the ferryman blogsite and forum) suggest that there might be a waking body and a dreaming one. Castenada calls it The Nagual and Peake, The Daemon but other cultures have different names for it and it also goes by the name of The Id in Psychoanalysis and Insanity in Psychiatry (ungroundedness). To The artist it is the muse - to the magician, his familiar. To the UFO buff, the alien - The ghost, to the paranormal researcher and the unknown, to anyone into psychic research or adventure. It is also the other and the feminine, to the mystical. It is the simple, innocent child that just wants to have fun. It is what we escape to, when this world becomes too much (stress/ whiteout from overexposure). Life is like a magnet and we need balance, which if we don't take will 'repel' us into this other world whether we like it or not (Kicking and screaming, we try to rebel against going where death or unconsciousness (illness, accident, even simple thought) will automatically take us if we resist too long its embrace). It affects civilizations as much as individuals, tearing us away from our addictive pursuits. The dance of death is trying to stay awake until the pull becomes too strong and we are drawn into this other place of nightmares (the past catching up with us/ hell) or dreams (the future opening up to us/ heaven), if we don't resist.

[paigetheoracle]

I see a link, not only to my other thread going out in this particular forum, on aliens but also the mind i.e. Inhibition or withdrawal from fear, leading to conscience/ conscious awareness of the other i.e. The Physical Universe - others/ other things in existence versus exhibitionism or unconscious reaction to own urges and only awareness of the self and its wants.

If you truly want to know the basis of crime in my opinion, this is it - total lack of awareness of others by the dreaming self as lawfulness is the complete opposite (introversion as opposed to extroversion - the Id as opposed to the ego)

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by paigetheoracle

Could all mental illness be losing touch with reality, either through stress or lack of sleep from too much stress? Could this create a situation where the delineation between waking and sleeping disappears, creating a situation where the mind confuses one for the other and acts out the fantasy, believing it to be the reality?

Sleep depravation can lead to a condition in which one experiences brief “dreamlets” with certain similarities to psychotic hallucinations. To the best of my knowledge, there are both symptomatic differences, and measurable (via PET, fMRI, etc.) neurological differences between dream, whether the usual sleeping kind, or the sleep deprivation-induced kind, and hallucination, fugue states, anxiety, depression, and other conditions considered mental illness.

So, in short, the answer to paige’s “could it be?” question, is no. This is not to say that sleep disorders cannot contribute to mental illness, or be symptomatic of it. Sleep disorders, particularly insomnia, are common documente symptoms of many mental disorders.

This was discussed in some previous threads, including such posts as my Documented and personal accounts of sleep depravation and
Another personal sleep-depravation anecdote.

[modest]

Originally Posted by paigetheoracle

Both Carlos Castenada and Anthony Peake ('Is there life after death? /Cheating the ferryman blogsite and forum) suggest that there might be a waking body and a dreaming one.

Many eastern philosophies especially in Buddhism teach that the wold we see is no more than a dream. The idea is to become aware that it is a dream and become lucid which is somewhat synonymous with enlightenment.

Reality in Buddhism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

~modest

PS: I have a sleep disorder and I'm quite sane