https://www.washingtonpo...into-an-unraveling-mind/

So can meditation work the same way as a psychedelic in bringing out a mental illness?

Or are we really being farmed by aliens?

It's always really smart people that this stuff happens too. That's probably the part that scares me the most, either way.

There's plenty of evidence that meditation can, in some people, trigger profoundly disturbed and/or bizarre behavior.

We can't be certain what role it played in the development of this guy's psychosis though.

Blessings
~ND

I agree with what ND is saying. There are alot of possibilities & different things that potentially come into play when something like this happens. It seems to me that is is never a simple thing & there are many compounding factors that cause people to snap in this way.

With that being said, i do think that the altered states reached by meditation pose some of the same risks psychedellic use does. If one is not prepared to some degree, or at least capable of dealing with the possible shifts in consciousness & perception that occur, especially if it is not changes they are comfortable with or able to navigate through, it can turn into an extremely stressful situation.
When life is already hard enough to deal with before hand & one has many compounding problems & stresses they cannot deal with I think it just becomes too much. Some react violently while others quietly self destruct or try to get the balance back & gain control & stability within their life again. IMO it is all in how one reacts to stress & extreme situations & copes.

I have never been in this man`s shoes & I will never know what was going through his mind, so I may be entirely wrong, but this is the observations I have made based on how most seem to react in very trying or extreme situations.
IME, reacting in an extreme manor has never seemed like a wise or particularly logical option even when trapped in the depths of a psychedellic hell for what seems to be eternity, & I cannot see any situation in normal life being quite as difficult as some of the bad trips I have lived through.

This is really bizarre, to say the least.

I find the fact that meditation can contribute to such bizarre behavior, and facilitate such strong experiences (he was allegedly experiencing intense OBE's after only a few months of meditation), to be really quite interesting. I know meditation is powerful, but I had never considered it could catalyze episodes like this.

What do you all think the odds are that there could have been an underlying mental affliction, maybe exacerbated by high levels of stress and introspective awareness?

I think this is the most likely culprit TBH.
Under normal circumstances an extreme reaction like this seems very illogical, but given an already weak hold on reality coupled with a tendency to react in a violent or in an extreme manor to situations like this are already present within someone, it seems much more likely that compounding factors trigger an outburst of this magnitude.