Asperger's/Autism; a spiritual condition?

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So you are conveniently ignoring the fact that Orwell is a Theist

Wingnuts on both sides of almost any debate point to me as an example of a horrible extremist from the other side. If my political and religious views contain something to piss off everyone, I must be doing something right.

In terms of being spiritually elevated--not much...some more than others. In terms of viewing reality in a different way from NTs--yes.

This Hasidic theory may be intuitively and logically sound but only for a fraction of us. I used to think much the same thing. And still do to a certain extent. However--through frequent perusal of the WP boards I have primarily disabused myself of that notion. The posts here are like a sharp smack on the head. I thought I was obnoxious...but WP gives a whole new meaning to the word. Now don't get me wrong...WP is an absolutely fantastic resource. A real awakening to the world of aut and the autie/aspie.

From 6 months here at WP I've gained a new appreciation for the NT world as the aspie world is so bizarro that only a true geek would have the intestinal fortitude to connect with many of these people. Nevertheless I am an aspie and often I wish I weren't....My people are so strange--it seems nearly impossible for us to comprehend each other..How can NTs possibly look into our world and not be struck into a pillar of salt from the shock to their system of seeing us in our native habitat.. verbally breaking bread with those who are like us..sharing the intrigue of our private realities with each other...We feel we can drop the guard here...the guard we maintain for shielding ourselves from the NT world at large..

No...really...we are all from the bizarro world. And one thing you can say about us, we aren't as boring as NTs.

Of the 24,500 members of WP there are many who seldom or rarely post...It is that group who may meet the criteria of your Hasidic theory. I certainly hope and wish they are more spiritually inclined [or elevated] than the majority of the high post count aspies here... who aren't people with whom I would choose to associate...ever...not even if they were the last people alive on planet Earth.

Then again, there are some gentle souls who seem so timid and serene that maybe, just maybe, they are the ones who would qualify for this Hasidic theory. On the other hand, the prophets among us may be the ones who find their weirdness impossible to contain...not choosing to edit or revise what happens to be welling up within them. Sometimes I am impressed with the astute clarity and precision when an autistic arrow hits the bullseye of a previously vague and fuzzy matter. Sometimes their insight and depth of thinking are breathtakingly pure and nearly shatter the limits of the possible...

Autistics definitely give a whole new meaning to the idea of--possibility. And I think NTs have barely scratched the surface in terms of glimpsing what we are capable of doing and perceiving......

Last edited by alba on 16 Feb 2009, 2:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

John 15:18-20 "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. (19) If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (20) Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

I do see the world differently than the NTs, but on a very basic level: I do not follow a statement because everyone follows it, I do not believe that something is true if I do not have at least strong evidence and even with evidence I still maintain a doubt. This doubt is even stronger when a majority of people have this believe because historically the majority was mostly wrong.

NTs follow the herd out of instinct, I do not. I look at the herd, know too well that I need the herd, but try not be more part of herd than absolutely necessary.

When I say something it often a sharp slap in the face, because I prefer to give my analysis frank and clear. I try to argue as rational and imperative as possible. It is nearly an obsession of mine to destroy any kind of believe system.



We do need to play here with rules which not ours; this whole system of illogical and superfluous rules, which are for - at least me - a burden to play with, but are needed to maintain live.



No - the NT-world is bizarre. The games they play, the rules they need to maintain society, the vanities they need to maintain their self - that's bizarre!



I am wondering that the group of whom you never would not "choose to associate", "even if they were the last people alive" are not the same you are "impressed with the astute clarity and precision"?

Hear hear!

Sorry its nice to see somebody who can vocalize their opinions without fear of harming others. See, I'm to nice to say what I really think about things like this

There's a stereotype of Jews being tightfisted, manipulative and power-hungry and a stereotype of African Americans being crack addicts who would mug there own grandmother given half the chance... yet I'd be willing to put money on there only being an extreme minority amongst these two ethnic groups who even come close to falling within the respective stereotypes.

This reasoning you've used to come to such a conclusion is just as flawed as any NT who gets skeptical when I tell them I have AS because I don't resemble Dustin Hoffman awkwardly playing blackjack...
I'm overtly religious and I was an athiest for the vast majority of my life. Each aspie is as unique as the other, I don't think there's anything in our make-up that somehow makes it less possible for us to be religious.

And this thread does seem to have rapidly developed into an attack upon belief systems and theology, which wasn't exactly what I was hoping for ..

i can only talk for myself because i have no idea about others (whether or not they are AS).

i have been called spiritually ret*d by "spritually" inclined people.
i have no sense of what people are looking at in the sky when they go into their spritual moods.

i see people who focus on things they can not see or logically calculate, as similar to some types of psychotic people. there is a kind of "magical" thinking that characterises their mindsets.

serious examples are those ministers on late night religious TV who seem to shiver in a palsied way as they shriek their hallelujah style rantings to captivated and brainwashed crowds.

i do not believe in phrenology, but i do believe a persons facial bone structure distorts with time, to a shape that is more characteristic of their thinking style. i have seen crime shows on TV where a normal person suddenly goes insane and then is a serial killer for 15 years until he is caught. the pictures of them when they were sane were normal looking faces, but after 15 years of horrible evil psychosis, their faces look very scarily skewed.

when i look at the faces of those TV ministers, they seem grotesquely distorted and like faces of people who have gone mad. their eyes are glazed and they seem very sick in the head to me.

their "flocks" all smile in a kind of trance like way, and tears roll down their faces as they soak up every word of the minister.
i find it hard to believe that so many people could be so affected by the ravings of an almost certain lunatic. they must have an emptiness and fear that they wish to fill with hope by being in a group of other "believers"...no matter what belief they wish to "share".

some of the ministers are in a delusion of grandeur. but the majority of them have even more severe psychoses. they have the extended version of "delusions of grandeur" which is a "messianic complex". that is how i appraise it. i may be wrong, but i do no damage or interfere with them with my appraisals. i ignore weeds that are poisoning lands far away from my privacy.

those ministers may each think they are the secret son of god (which they think will be revealed miraculously at some future stage in their carnal life)
but i think that when they die, they will be no more existent than they were before they were born. and that will be the case forever.

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when i was a teen, a group of people who thought i was smart but spiritually blind, spiked a drink i had with LSD. they thought they could "save" me from my ignorance by "turning me on". they thought that a psychedelic experience would marry my "spirit" with my "mind".

well i do not have a spirit i guess because it did not work for me. i did have a mind bending experience, but it was totally sensory, and i never felt any religious thing during it.
i saw the external world in a weird way. the trees were being pulled into the ground and then thrust back out of the ground and re-expanded fully formed and undamaged with every breath i took.
like a feather duster being pushed and pulled through a cardboard toilet paper tube. i shut my eyes so i could not see, as i was getting nauseus.

then an entire eiffel tower fell together in my mind from floating fragmented multi colored light sticks that all were sucked like by magnetism to their miraculously correct place to create a perfect eiffel tower. the light sticks were very thin laser like light straws of brilliance unseeable with the resolution of a physical eye. the final structure when it fell together was incredible to "see".

then i remembered other designs i wanted to see, and i remembered the golden gate bridge, and it was formed and constructed the same manner in my mind. i did this for the whole LSD trip in my "shut eyed isolated world", but in the same room there were people who were burning incense and talking about things religious.

i am blind and i can not see.

It did not work because any drug can't produce anything new in your brain, the drug "only" opens connections within the brain which are normally closed. Different drug work here in different directions: LSD does blurt or even abolish the normally sharp separation lines between the senses (synaesthesia is with LSD quite common) or to the subconsciousness. It is therefore not surprising that religious people can have deep religious experiences under LSD, but that does not prove anything, because a Hindu would have absolute different experiences than e.g. a Catholic.



I would not call it blindness not see something which is not there.

alba, that was a wonderful post. I agree that the AS community can be as intolerant as the NT community when it comes to neurodiversity. In this case it is spiritual diversity that is being mocked. For those aspies who can understand Hasidic Mysicism and who may be too gentle to battle the bullies, reread the passage that AG posted:

BTW, Magnus did you take your user name from the 17 year old chess champion Magnus Carlsen? I named my cat after him. His name is Magnus

One of the great achievements of philosophy and science of the last 400 years is that we passed mysticism in any favour. One of the great achievements of more modern neuroscience is that we understand now "spirituality" as a function of the right parietal lobe in our brains. We can therefore safe ignore any such "experiences" as a nice show in our brains, but without any further value.

I do not think that any irrational thinking deserves an area where it can grow without rigid rational scrutiny.



Better: "Hast thou reason? I have. Why then makest thou not use of it? For if thy reason do her part, what more canst thou require?" and "Let thy reasonable faculty, work upon his reasonable faculty; show him his fault, admonish him. If he hearken unto thee, thou hast cured him, and there will be no more occasion of anger." Marcus Aurelius

Expecting people to use reason??? Well now, that is idealistic.

Thanks Magnus.


*the rest of this post has been deleted.*
It was a mini autobiograpy. For once I'm grateful to being totally ignored. I'm like you Magnus but posting my story on here is a fool's mission.

Ah well...some things are too precious or sacred to share with scoffers.

Last edited by alba on 16 Feb 2009, 4:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

whitetiger, I was not aware of a chess champion named Magnus. I chose this as a pen name because the aliens told me it has mystical significance in boat rowing.
"Row, Row, Row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily,
life is but a dream..."

http://www.juliantrubin.com/encyclopedi ... ffect.html

Dussel, Have you read any book regarding the origins of Hasidim or do you even know what the philosophy is about?

Baal Shem Tov was a genius. As much as you want to believe that western medicine and humans know all of the mysteries of life, it's just not true. Neuroscience is not aware of what causes genius. To make a logical opinion about anything, including Hasidic Mysticism, you should at least read one book about it.

I know roughly what is about - a religious movement: Therefore in its very substance irrational and so "Causa finita".



There simply no "mysteries" - there issues on which we have currently no good theory, but this not a subject of mysteries, but of measurement and thesis and the rational critique on such. I think of the thinkers of Jewish origin Baruch Spinoza has more to say, because his philosophy does not need any supernatural ideas.



Genius is just an other name for wiring in the brain.