He’d been on a 3 month meditation retreat in the 70s,
meditating up to 10 times daily.
He called me when the retreat was over.
Said he was in cosmic consciousness.
Said he could look into my eyes and take me there too.
Said he had psychic powers.
His voice sounded strange as he talked on.
His words became disconnected.
I knew he wasn’t in cosmic consciousness.
I knew he didn’t have psychic powers.
I knew he had had a break with reality.
Then he told me he was calling from the ER.
They didn’t know what he was talking about.
They weren’t highly evolved enough to understand
higher states of consciousness.
As he talked on, my heart sank and it was clear
he had suffered a severe mental breakdown.
He never completely recovered.
He bounced in and out of psych wards
for the rest of the time I knew him.
Maybe he was predisposed to mental illness.
But I think he overdosed on way too much meditation
and compromised his mental faculties beyond repair,
and I know that has happened to others.
Bob Boyd
