"And for those of us fortunate enough to have these (peak) experiences, society has a number of ways in which to welcome you back into reality: incarceration, hospitalization, electro-shock therapy, religious confession; banishment from society, medication."

This reminds me of an experience I had when, years ago, I was a social worker in a day care program for elders with severe mental and physical health problems. One of the attendees was a 70+ year old man with a 50 year history of what psychiatrists labeled "schizophrenia". He also had a history of alcoholism, an attempt to "self-medicate" his delusional thinking. He attended the day care because he'd had a major stroke and was no longer able to take care of his physical needs. In helping him to obtain Social Security benefits, I befriended the man. I had an "open door" policy to the clients and he sometimes asked to be wheeled into my office to "chat". He was on medication to control his auditory hallucinations, when he heard voices telling him to hurt himself. He'd tell the psychiatrist the medication was helping him; he confided in me that the medication made little difference but he didn't "want to hurt the psychiatrist's feelings". He told me he'd "learned to ignore" the voices, as he'd heard them for 50 years and was "used to them".

One day he was in my office and began telling me how extraterrestials communicated with people. He said that the ET's put a "band of gold", with lights on it, around people's head, that went around the forehead and the back of the head, and this was the communication device. He also indicated that another part of the band went over the head, from forehead to back of head, along the crown of the head, and that the ends of this piece connected with the head band. When he was telling me this, my heart started pounding and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had a hard time maintaining a "professional interest" (i.e. "emotional distancing" that social workers and other mental health care professionals are taught to engage in, to keep from getting too involved personally with a client) in what he was telling me. I had no idea at the time why this fascinated me so. I could not understand my reaction. I found myself asking the man if ET's had communicated with him in this manner, and he said, yes, they had. It was soon time for the man's lunch and we ended the conversation. This man had never spoken to me about such experiencs before, and never did again in subsequent conversations.

I couldn't get what my client had said out of my mind. I found myself wondering about myself. I started questioning my own reasoning, saying things to myself like: "when a social worker starts believing in the delusions of a patient with schizophrenia, it's time to stop being a social worker!" The All-That-Is must have heard me, because weeks later I was fired from my job, after 19 years of being a social worker, and I never went back to work.

Here's the amazing part: Months after the conversation with the day-care man, I was reading a book by Alberto Villardo, a man who spent 20 years in Peru being trained and initiated by Inca Shamans. In his book, "Shaman, Healer, Sage" he gives an exercise to connect the Third Eye to the visual cortex, so that one may envision what energies the Third Eye is bringing in. The process involves installing fibers of light along the scalp from the Third Eye to the visual cortex at the base of the back of the head. Part of the installation process for these fibers goes like this: "...tap on your 6th chakra (Third Eye) on the center of your forehead. Pat an imaginary band from your forehead to the base of your skill in the back of the head. Follow a line just abouve each ear. Repeat several times. Now tap once again on your sixth chakra and follow a band along the top of your head (tapping with both hands along the midline) to the base of the skull. Imagine you are placing a crown of light over your head. (From Shaman, Healer, Sage, page 121).

You guessed it: what Villardo calls the "Crown of Light" corresponds with what my client had called the "band of gold"! When I first read this in Villardo's book, I couldn't believe my eyes! I have never stopped wondering about the man in the day care center. I wonder what would have happened to him if he had been raised in a society that valued visions, dreams, and intuition. Would he still have been considered to be "mentally ill", or would he have received training to become something else: a healer, a Shaman, a dream-teller, a wise man?

--Liora Leah