I have been studying the Religions of the World in a personal capacity taking bits of information from here and there and not having studied the scriptures of any of the established religions. I am a Vishista-advaita Vedantist that is a very strong theist who has experienced the highest levels of spirituality in renouncing my bodily needs to raise myself transcendentally to the peak of my mind in what I call the interface of the somatic mind with the Supermind or OM. Beyond that God lies dormant in our psyche. That is the background. I am therefore not even a spirit as the spirit is transcended into the state of being that is known to me as nothingness or Shunyata. I am denounced by society for leaving my body and so remain isolated in my home-ashram with my wife and daughter doing what is needed as man about the house. Do you have any comments on this?
In a personal way, I have never found reading to be of any use to me; I have found that thoughts need to be assessed in light of the external and internal realities that we humans experience. In the external realm that we cannot get away from I have found it necessary to immerse myself in Creation in participating in every facet of life from family life, the work environment, the political sphere and the natural world in terms of how we humans tame the environment to generate goods and services for our needs. This was the basis of my scientific work in the biological sciences and the political work that I subsequently engaged in. But it was not enough. Something internal was happening. I could not disregard the visions and utterances in verbal and written form that startled me and treated them as something to be conscious about to try and ascertain if these were psychiatric disturbances or the mind being under the reigns of a higher power that was guiding me onwards. So I abandoned my scientific career to delve into the mind in no uncertain manner and this took 24 years during which I had to contend with the material world and the mental realm simultaneously for I was determined to find out the meaning of my experiences as to whether the were guiding me in a particular direction and especially if they were a Higher Power showing me the meaning of life itself. I was twice hospitalised in mental hospitals in 2004 and 2008 with persistent delusional disorder and later with paranoid schizophrenia but the latter was a symptom of the State's persecution of me for challenging the political actions of the political hierarchy. I am not mentally in any shape or form today but have to take mental health medications recommended to me as anti-psychotic, anti-depressant and mood-stabilising agents.
My search for the truth about God took me through to a point that I abandoned all my bodily functionality to all intents and purposes and lived to my mental energies alone. I had no hopes, no desires, no expectations, no aims, no ambitions, no plans no objectives and no ego during the latter stages of my journey and this gave me the opportunity to study my mind at a personal level, away from bodily functions. It took me beyond consciousness therefore, the consciousness that you may be referring to as spirit in the Christian sense. And I conducted all my actions nonchalantly spontaneously and unpremeditatedly each moment of the day to see where it would all lead to; whether I would survive as a human being without being hospitalised again in a mental hospital or be able to live in the Community with all the members of society who wish to engage with me and especially my small family of a wife and daughter.
This is the case today when I am in full liberty and at total peace of mind to be able to share my story so that it might prove useful to anyone who may be thinking about these matters. I remain a very strong theist, although whilst I gave that God a name as Sri Krishna from the study of Chladean Hebrew Numerology borne of a book Star Signs by Linda Goodman, I regard God as God. I regard God as Truth, and Truth as God. What is Truth? Truth is Reality. At the highest level of truth-consciousness it identifies ones next step forward.