Brainchildren -- Multiple Personality Disorder

In particular, is has a fascinating, speculative conclusion, and my goal here to to push that conclusion to further extremes.

Below is rough draft. Its late and I'm sleepy ...

Notes and Points to argue and elaborate:

• Some 10%-15% percent of the US population self-categorizes itself to be 'deeply religious'. I have a pet hypothesis that the majority of this group has spoken to God or have heard the 'Voice of God' in a very direct, literal sense: they have experienced an 'epiphany'. I suspect that this same majority is loath to reveal this connection to even their closest friends, for fear of social derision: this is just plain not something one talks about in public, certainly not to most people. For some, I believe it has even scared them shitless, which is why so many of the far-right religious, especially the Protestants, are so 'up-tight'. They are petrified, and don't know quite how to express it appropriately, and thus turn up an unbreechable barrier to more 'open-minded' experiences. I think they fear loosing control, of going over the edge, of going looney-tunes, and thus could never just 'let it all hang out'. This so colors their actions and behaviors that they go so far as to try to impose strict, straight social norms on those all around them.

  Having myself experienced an 'epiphany', I can't but wonder whether this is a phenomenon that is not unrelated to MPD. My experiences (I think I've had more than one, but can only place one clearly) have been very powerful, very real, and all-consuming for the few minutes of duration. However, in retrospect, the 'messages' have for the most part been quite lame and superficial, to the point of embarrassment (the most recent, the one I remember best, had to do with a transcendancy of rock-n-roll song!) This is hardly dignified: no True God should be delivering such trite messages; and yet, the seriousness of the experience is undeniable.

• Thoughts burbling at the level of consciousness: the common claim that some answer was arrived at 'unconsciously'. This does some disservice to the thinking process. Indeed, many things that I do are indeed controlled by unconscious mechanisms; however, many are just at the edge of consciousness: further introspection will uncloth and make conscious the previously seemingly sub-conscious thought process. Indeed, much of my personal, intellectual activity consists of grabbing that thought, that impulse, that intuition that lies at the edge of consciousness and wresting it into my conscious mind, making it the soft-focus of my attention, with the aim of ultimately verbalizing it.

• I personally am nowhere near 'MPD' or in any other way insane, and yet, the idea of letting my brain 'leave it all behind', to 'space out', to 'take a vacation and let someone else deal with it', resonates strongly. But why does it resonate? Its as if I've been there and done that. Am I just being suggestible? Do I have a vivid imagination? Why do I feel I personally know this phenomenon? How many other normal, sane people feel that they can identify with this phenomenon? I have never been hypnotized, nor have I ever knowingly self-hypnotized. So, in theory, I do not know what it feels like to be hypnotized. But might it be this that I am identifying with?

• Roger Penrose, final chapter of 'emporer's new mind', goes on at length on how the solutions to difficult problems can suddenly just pop into ones mind, even as one is crossing the street. How much of this is attributable to having some other part of ones brain in active pursuit of the problem, inserting itself into the current stream of consciousness? Penrose makes this seem magical, whereas it need not be at all. It just might be that the normal stream of consciousness is hoping about between different active brain centers.