Before I fell victim to full blown schizophrenia, I had a number of weird and then unexplainable experiences prior to the complete manifestation of my illness. In 1995, while I was in Hawaii, I was going through a divorce with my wife. I was having a hard time then, emotionally, when she left me, and I was often quite depressed. But, there were some other strange things also going on – things I then could not explain. When I could afford drugs, I would score a bag of methamphetamine, and so when I had some of these weird experiences I immediately thought that they might be a symptom of my drug use. But, I was already quite experienced with drugs, and so these “stranger” experiences did not then strike me as being incidents of “tweaking”.
When I was home along using methamphetamine, or sometimes when I was coming down from the drug, I would hear a strange ringing sound in my ears – like a high pitched energy sound. Hard to explain, but as I was somewhat the budding mystic and magician then, I thought that maybe someone was casting a spell on me? And, I was detecting some sort of energy field, or some being in the astral plane, that was causing me to hear overlapping frequencies? These were just some of the things that I thought briefly, to explain the experience. I tried to detect the source of the sound, as it also seemed to be coming from outside of me. I thought that something almost paranormal was going on, but then, the whole experience would end, and I would forget about it altogether. One time while this was going on, I turned my stove burner on to get ready to cook something to eat. One of my friends was over visiting and also witnessed what happened next. Suddenly, a flame appeared above the stove burner, and immediately went out! It appeared to have manifested just above the burner, in mid-air, and the flame did not ever touch the burner. It appeared in a flash, and disappeared just as fast as it had appeared. There was probably a natural explanation for this, but at the time, the ringing in my ears and the almost paranoid feeling that accompanied it was rather extreme.
Also, during Tarot card readings which I would often do for myself, I had at least two disturbing experiences. One time, during one Tarot reading, I learned a valuable piece of information – I learned that my wife had been having an affair, and that was her reason for leaving me. It was a card reading that was not like the others I had become so accustomed to. It “seemed” like a presence took over my mind, and led me to conclude and discover that piece of information during that reading. During another reading, I started interpreting the cards in a very bizarre manner, and again, it seemed as if some presence were inserting messages into my head. My interpretation of these “messages” was then that my wife was in danger of being hit by a bus early that morning. My eyeballs glanced over the cards, but the message was inserted into my brain before I could begin to actually read the cards. The experience was so convincing that I almost acted upon it – I almost called my wife at around 5:00 a.m. in the morning to warn her that she might get hit by a bus if she left for work that day. Again, afterwards I more or less forgot about the whole affair, and I sometimes wondered if the drugs and depression were at the root of all this. I know today that these experiences were really early symptoms of schizophrenia.
These experiences discontinued when I left Hawaii and relocated to California. Two years later in California the strange experiences again commenced. This time these strange occurrences would happen while my girlfriend was away from home, and I was high on crank (methamphetamines.) I sometimes heard her voice, or I thought that I heard her voice – it was very faint and hard to tell. This time I immediately thought that I had to be tweaking, as this is a more common tweaking type of experience. Then, more regularly, I distinctly heard her voice saying, “dude!”. When I heard it, I heard it as if it were coming from the attic, and so sometimes I would physically go up into the attic to see if she were there. I thought that if she were up in the attic, that would be rather weird? Why would she spy on me? And so, I never really believed that what I was hearing was altogether real, but it was real enough to me that I often tried to detect the source of the voice.
This time these strange experiences did not fade away – in fact, they became a more regular occurrence, and the new experiences were also quite different, but just as strange. I am writing a book entitled, “The Awakening of John David”, and in that book I go into great detail as regards these strange experiences, and how they even serve to tell a story. These experiences were truly a backdrop; a set of guided hallucinations that would only later be more fully understood. There was a “method to the madness” (pun intended.) For example, I began to “receive” strange, encoded messages where the Kabbalistic Tree of Life was a “key” in decoding these messages. I received messages that involved Hebrew letters, their numerical equivalents, astrological symbols, magick symbols, even Tarot cards I think. This “receiving of messages” is more adequately explained as “thought insertion”. And, that is very much like what the experiences were like. Then, I would suddenly become aware that the whole room was suddenly filled with a soft, golden light. I would feel very much at peace. I felt like these were important and holy trances, and I felt that some, something divine was about to manifest. I sometimes thought that perhaps my previous magickal initiations were now being hastened!
There were many other strange incidents. I found myself speaking in tongues once. I stood there while a series of words came out of my mouth, seemingly on their own. I watched the whole thing while being quite aware of what was going on, but I was also completely unable to explain it. In a very poetic sense, one day I suddenly found myself shouting an announcement of my return, as if I were a divine being, coming to seek retribution upon my enemies! I also experienced strange visions, and more thought insertion about the possible coming of God, but in the form of the Egyptian god Horus. (I was then very much interested in the writings of Aleister Crowley.) I sometimes experienced messages, and even urges, to go to a particular place within the city, and wait for something. I also sometimes heard the voice of my girlfriend’s sister, and finally, on November 20, 1997, I heard a large, booming voice announce itself to me. It came from right above my head. It stated in a commanding voice, “Repent, or be redeemed!” I could only interpret this voice as belonging to God, maybe Horus! I dropped to my knees in the position of prayer, out of respect. I instantly felt that I must have done something seriously wrong to have God address me in so direct of a way!
The voice then seemed to be coming from an Indonesian marionette that I had in my room. It was actually a puppet of an Indonesian god – how fitting! Then it seemed to leave the puppet and hovered above and before me. I do not recall then if it communicated to me directly, using words, or thought insertion, or both. But, I understood that I was being challenged to get up, go into the adjacent bedroom, and kill the homeowners. If I did that, I would be redeemed. If I did not kill them, I would have to repent, and that meant that I would have to die – at the hand of the visitor. At this point, I was suspecting that it might not be God, but, fearing for my life, I crept down the hall to peek into the adjacent bedroom. I had no intention of killing anyone, but I wanted to get away from the being in my room. Deciding that there was no way that I was going to kill these people, I went back to my room, got on my knees, and more or less prepared to die.
But, the voice then directed me to pack what belongings I could carry, and a book that I had on my shelf entitled “The Book of the Law”, by Aleister Crowley. I was to leave this house and never return. Now I thought that I was perhaps being directed to go on a mission of some religious importance. After I got into the car, the being then whispered to me and told me to go back to my room and go to sleep. I was high on crank, so it would otherwise be impossible for me to go to sleep. Plus, I had planned on staying up all that night, getting high on crank. But, I listened to the voice, and I went back inside and went to bed. At that time, the “being” initiated a series of very relaxing energy waves. They moved up and down throughout my body, and I was more or less hypnotized into a deep sleep. During this experience of being put to sleep, ever so comfortably, the voice was explaining that it was either a minister of God, of sorts, or even the actual voice of God. At any rate, I understood this encounter to be of some great religious importance. The next day, the hallucinations continued, and that night marked the beginning of my now eighteen-year journey with this illness.
During that first year, I did more or less believe that I was living with the voice of God, for some yet unrevealed but important purpose. Also during that first year, I recalled my experiences in Hawaii, and I linked them to what I was now experiencing. Later on, when the voices and the other experiences began to cause me more pain than good, I went through a phase of thinking that they were perhaps evil spirits, or perhaps that I was even possessed by a demon.
Finally, I found the psychiatric community, and an explanation for what I was experiencing was afforded me. I have suffered from this illness for eighteen years now, and I am also treatment resistant, so I continue to suffer from hallucinations, but often more mildly. I am free of delusional thought and thinking, but I have never responded to any of the anti-psychotic mediations prescribed for me. And so, I manage my life much better that I used to today, and I wait in earnest for an explanation, and a cure. I am planning to finish my autobiography, “The Awakening of John David”, by the end of 2016, where I plan to outline in detail the history of my Schizophrenic experiences – for the ultimate purpose of helping those who still suffer from this sometime rather bizarre illness.
