Having Seen God

(The Last Stop for Madness in New York)

The Manhattan’s Internal Hospital was the last stop for madness 

in New York 

dreaded by staff and patients alike

only few doctors agreed  to work there, the best ones

a bunker-like island off the shore of Manhattan

it defied the typical and the predictable

and took only the most volatile

the most treatment-resistant patients from other hospitals

only those already beyond the realm of psychiatry

those outside of the known

those beyond psychopharmacology, psychoanalysis, clinical psychology

"treatment failures” in all disciplines

those who did not respond to the usual 

and failed the preferred Manhattan cocktail

of new medications – the SSRIs, the atypicals, the experimental trials –

those who failed the expected, the eclectic

concoction of the psychodynamic, cognitive, behavioral, 

strategic, systemic, and the humanistic of all psychotherapies

only those who were exceptions - 

there was something else wrong with them

but what - nobody knew, only those were transferred there -

sent on their way without an end - and there was some comfort

in that there was no stated end to it –

only those could enter there

enter that apocalyptic mix which could not be defined

by postmodern definition

the mix which appeared in cracks between disciplines

where only uncharted and unanswered questions were interesting

where the linearity of modern reasoning failed to reach the unknown 

of the Real

where our world appeared to be a consensual hallucination

only there those patients could really find salvation

for their anguish and their loss in being

having seen God they didn’t know how to speak to Him later –

How do you see God? How do you speak to Him? What do you say, anyway…..?

they still don’t know what it meant

those few chosen to have a glimpse, to gaze beyond

those who spent most of their lives searching

searching for the ultimate experience, the time when it all comes to full realization and constructs (however defined)  “it”

a career, family life, wealth, fame, success, peak experiences, adventures, art or…. anything that is that most ultimate experience one can have in one’s life

But whatever it “is”, for them it was seeing into the true nature of their minds seeing the Mind, meeting God and realizing

that the “I” and all sentient beings are already enlightened and in heaven

Samsara and Nirvana, Hell and Heaven already here

in our minds

as we create them for each of us and for all of us at the same time

they were all there – there was no medication for that disease,

wandering through emptied corridors at night

those patients who never left the grounds of the Internal

some for over 25 years,

shadows, empty minds, empty brains already forgotten 

by time and society

yet kept alive because of our mental health industry,

industry committed to “long term care”

indefinite maintenance of human lives

(and we all agreed to feel good about it and to pay for it)

because nothing else worked for them

and it might have been a brain disease which we are yet to discover

or maybe a biochemical failure

or, as some are beginning to suspect, a genetic disorder 

of consciousness

a disorder of the mind’s functions

of how mind represents the world inside of the human brain

- this part was the most intriguing to all - that it may not be just the brain

not only the  neurotransmitters -

after all, what causes the changes in the levels of neurotransmitters?

A realization that there are many unknowns,

many mysteries to the mind,

or maybe just one Mystery of one Mind?

God?

A Mind which could be found in the realm of the quantum 

in the N-th dimension of the multiple universes

a Mind where the concept of THE beginning has already lost its place

as if it never happened

where there is no gap between non-local objects

no gap between “here” and “there”

where somehow, on some yet unknown level,

we all are connected and functioning, Mind-to-mind, as one.