Right – I’ll try and keep this simple. Almost exactly 10 years ago, I encountered Derrida and Deconstruction/post-structuralism at Berkeley for the first time (I may well have not properly understood it, but took it as what I now understand to be quite ‘eastern’ – interpenetration of binary opposites – the idea of ‘black’ person ‘creates’ white person etc.) I started to realise that my stable sense of ‘self’ was constructed by language in precisely this way, in opposition to a ‘shadow’ that i created of ‘other’. I got quite freaked out somehow. I realised that my clothes didn’t reflect any stable inner ‘identity,’ but were just like dressing up in costume. I couldn’t sleep.
I was wandering about the campus obsessing over ‘all the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players’. Weird coincidences stared happening. Things started getting very ‘symbolic’. I’d be thinking about Alice in wonderland, and then someone dressed up as the Mad Hatter would hand me a flyer for some party. Got pretty scared.

Gradually, my sense of being a seperate ‘ego’ started to disolve. ‘God’ started to rush in. I thought ‘I’ was dying (which, in a sense, ‘I’ was?) Time stood still. All is one. Heaven. All i could think of was the Blake line about ‘the world in a grain of sand, and eternity in an hour’... I’d stumbled on the consciousness which was the obvious root of all religion, and was what Everyone Was Always Looking For. I stayed in ‘paradise’ for about 2 hours?

When i realised I couldn’t stay here, but had to re-enter time and my ‘life’ it started to warp into ‘hell’. I spent time (in a model I’ve only made sense of this recently from Shinzen Young) having a bad time in the ‘realms of power’[?] Ghosts of dead slaves, paranoia, archetypes, black helicopter type stuff – all the ‘new age’ David Icke conspiracy weirdness. But bad. I knew enough to know something was very wrong and made it to a psychatric unit (by which time I was extremely agitated but effectively mute) and was diagnosed as ‘bipolar.’

I’ve basically had clincal depression ever since for the past 10 years. Read a lot of Robert Anton Wilson in an attempt to try and understand what had happened – virtually everything he talks about was present in my experience (and he used to live near where I did in Berkeley of course..) but never really got anywhere.

Recently I was sent on a mindfulness meditation course by my doctor. Have had some success with what I think is the first Jhana (and not just access concentration). But also some slightly scary feelings – like, my bodymind just isn’t used to being that calm. I had assumed that I wasn’t even on the ‘path’ yet, having just started. But having lurked here for a bit, I get the impression that this expereince above (satori?!) might have some bearing on things. Have I been in the ‘dark night’ for 10 years without knowing it? I just can’t get any consolation from the pleasures of the normal world after this experience and can’t take the various status games (money, doing ‘cool’ things) that seriously. Does this direct, prolonged experience of ‘The Source’ have any irreversible bearing on my position on the insight ‘path’? Or am I JUST MENTAL?

The strange thing was – vis a vis the bipolar ‘diagnosis’ – that my ‘ego’ never inflated, but disappeared.

Hey Bob, good to have you here.

Sounds like a mightily wild ride. From what you write it would be easy to make some insight stage map correlations, but I dont really know, it would probably be much better if you were to have a look at Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram (its available online or in book form) and see whether any of the stuff there makes sense to you.

It sure is possible that you are Dark Nighting, its also possible that you are bipolar, or something else, or all of the above but reading the book and especially the chapter on the stages of insight will make it easier for you to make up your own mind as to whether insight has anything to do with it.

All the best and good luck with this new line of inquiry, there is much to be found in it.

An old thread about bipolar disorder and insight.

If you want / have to go deeper in that direction (symbolic coincidences) - they can help you a lot by the way - I'd visit thebaptistshead.co.uk. The western tradition is an insight tradition that provides you with context for this stuff.

Apart from that, afaik you'll have to get used to leaving paradise again and again, all along the path. But you'll get better at revisiting the source, growth seems exponential at times. These experiences are not that uncommon, and people who can't forget about them start practicing sooner or later. If you do that, just don't practice to return to heaven only, get a better view & context.

Sounds strangely similar to what happened to me in Berkeley about eleven years ago. For me it was quantum physics mixed with my first introduction to Eastern thought, mixed with falling in love, mixed with lots of alcohol, some pot, and some mushrooms. Altogether, it led to the A&P event for me, in vipassana terms. This was followed by about a year in the Dark Night, and then about 9 years of wandering aimlessly through different traditions trying to find something that would lead me back to "that."

Don't have much to offer you as far as advice, but I think it could be a good chance you've been in insight territory this whole time. And, at the same time, it may be best to give attention to your sila/morality in a very down-to-earth, practical sense, as I find this gives a good grounding for navigating the crazy stuff.