sCHIZoPHReNIa diARiES
TRUE STORIES BY REAL SCHIZOPHRENICS
Schizophrenia Has No Borders or Boundaries
DEAN JOHNSTON'S STORY
In the spring of 1980 I left Crofton forced out by the townspeople who demanded I get a job. I took the bus with no destination in mind until I ran out of money. From then on I usually hitchiked, mostly through Alberta and B.C. quitting a job with my first pay check because I found working with people so difficult. They were playing games with me and making fun of me. I would then hitchike somewhere else. I thought I was being followed by a WW2 veteran everywhere I went who wanted me to shape up by working in construction like he did after the war. I kept trying to escape him but he had friends everywhere. I slept in city parks, by the side of the road and in single men's hostels. I was homeless and often penniless.
I remember once in Calgary staying at the single men's hostel and not getting to eat very much for several weeks, becoming quite weak. I couldn't work because I had dioxin poisining and this was affecting my cortical hormone balance making work too stressful. Tibetan buddhist lamas were reading my mind everywhere I went in Calgary, respectful and curious, because I had caused the Mt. St. Helen's erruption for them earlier that year through tantric meditation.
I don't think I quite understood or believed what was happening to me, but I was determined not to admit defeat and return to my parents house. It seemed like I had powerful friends who wanted me to pull myself up by my bootstraps. Only two years earlier I had been in graduate school, with a new friend, David Rae, discussing world politics while watching the CBC news at a local bar. David's brother, Bob Rae, later became the Premier of Ontario.
Come late fall I was in Victoria, driven south by the approaching winter. There I was somehow able to pay rent and I stayed there for four years. I started studying Tibetan buddhism and took refuge in the lama who lived there, Tashi Namjyal. I thought he was capable of all kinds of supernatural powers of the mind like telepathy and telekinesis. It is a tremendous invasion of privacy to have someone reading your mind all the time uninvited. I believed he was controling my dreams while I slept as well. He said to me in his broken English, "you special" and I thought that meant I had a lot of natural ability to be a very powerful tantric like him. He was the equivalent of a graduate teacher in the Tibetan monastic system.
I had caused the Mt. St. Helen's eruption with his guidance through tantric meditation. I had bad karma so I wasn't given control or access to my power but by causing Mt. St. Helen's to errupt the Tibetans were taking pressure off the California continental plates. We saved San Francisco.
I had gone to several family physicians about my physical problems of which dioxin poisining seemed to be the cause and I thought it was also causing my adjustment problems but the family doctors never realized what was happening to me and I stopped going to them and instead thought this Tibetan buddhist lama would be able to help me, because I did realize that something was wrong.
I was losing contact with reality gradually and stayed in abject poverty and I was miserable. I remember I bought a WW 2 rifle to please the WW 2 veteran and I would sit in my basement room with the barrel in my mouth and wonder if I should pull the trigger. I started to think Tashi Namjal was evil because he was celibate and I got messages from Beatle songs which I thought were from the Marharishi Mahesh Yogi to run away and that's what I did. I thought there was a war going on between two groups, both with supernatural powers, that would decide the fate of humanity. I called one the Sexuals and one the Antisexuals, because these powers came from sexuality.
I forget some of my life out west. I do remember being very miserable and very alone, identifying with Milarepa who is a Tibetan saint of sorts. The Tantric tradition, which is very interesting, has its roots in India. In the ninth century these supernormal powers were close to becoming a part of society. Tibetan buddhism incorporates a celibate tantricism in its teachings which has survived I think because it is also very religious. I was entranced by the erotic temples in India like Konarak and determined to become a tantric and help the world rediscover the supernormal powers of the mind in sexuality.
